From Chinese magazine Globe (Chinese text), translated by Joel Martinsen of Danwei blog:
As technology like online video continues to develop, the Internet provides people with a new venue for discourse. Virtual spaces push open the once-solemn gate to politics.
Truth or miscellany – different online opinions seen from different perspectives, and which bring up different problems. To address this, the reporter interviewed Yu Guoming, head of the Public Opinion Research Institute at Renmin University.
Globe: The Internet is becoming ever more important for transmitting information and manufacturing public opinion. Some say that it strengthens the interaction and intercommunication between “the will of the state” and “the will of the people”; to what degree will this influence the development of political civilization?
Yu Guoming: Domestically as well as internationally, the Internet provides a platform for expression to people who lacked such channels in the past. All of the different possibilities the Internet holds out are still in the process of development, but we can know that at least these channels have already begun to influence the political environment.In the past, public opinion had to pass through entities like legislatures or the media to be expressed. The Internet allows individuals to directly express their opinions about public policy or the government’s administrative actions. The Internet collects these “micro-powers” into a force that cannot be ignored in today’s society. [Full Text]
