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In the 21st century, new information technology has given birth to the new media and online dissemination of information. The integration of new information technology has resulted in the rapid rise of the Internet, the latest, most innovative, most important, and most internationalized information dissemination system which has the greatest potentials and is the best-positioned for the future.

1 Media and Modernity

In China, people first felt the change in media in the early and mid-1980s when television sets entered people’s homes and made wired broadcasting through street PA system obsolete.

1.1 The Change in Media

Before most households could afford a radio, people received information through the street PA system, the newspapers at their work units, and the bulletin boards in their communities. After radio became the most important disseminator of information, people cancelled newspaper subscriptions; to read Reference News was a symbol of political status for a long time.

Urban households began to buy television sets in the early 1980s to replace their radios which were always displayed prominently in their homes. Villagers followed suit and bought this electric gadget and they watched CCTV News, Spring Festival galas, and various lifestyle programs. It marked the beginning of a new era—the information age. Channels and quantity of information expanded at a rapid pace. The right to speak, once monopolized, started to spread.

CCTV inaugurated the show “Oriental Horizon” on May 1, 1993; this 40-minute news magazine proved widely influential from the start. It was followed by “Focus” which inspired people to pay more attention to current issues, especially those put under the microscope by public opinion. Media from all over China emulated these shows, encouraged by their success. The News Channel of CCTV began 24-hour broadcast of domestic and international news on May 1, 2003, taking maximum advantage of the timeliness of television by bringing visual news stories to the audience as soon they happen.

At the same time, the print media comprising newspapers and magazines were undergoing astonishing changes. A very prominent phenomenon was the appearance of weekly news magazines, the most famous of which was Southern Weekend. This magazine started in 1995 and its content consisted of a digest of news articles and an entertainment section with celebrity news; it then transformed into a comprehensive news magazine with original content and became a major magazine with nationwide influence in the early 2000s.

The popular newspapers put a lot of pressure on the CPC’s publications. The CPC introduced a spate of morning, evening, and city newspapers in the mid-1990s. Prior to this time, Party publications led in advertisement revenue and circulation. Things started to change after 1992, when Party newspapers started to lose readership because of their failure to pay attention to the readers’ interests. The popular newspapers which responded to the readers’ desires and created interesting contents became the winners and this fact could be glimpsed by the placement of popular and Party newspapers on newsstands. So after 1992, the Chinese press entered a new era in which the dominant force was the market; the levels of news, knowledge, practicality, and the focus on service and readers were raised in a very marked way.

1.2 Increase in Modernity

The combination of the return to newsworthiness and practicality, the creation of CCTV’s news department, and the success of Southern Weekend had deeper implications than a mere improvement and expansion of news.

First of all, information, not political propaganda, became the focus of people’s attention. This is an unmistakable sign that the entrenchment and operation of public media has pushed China into the information age.

Second, the media’s report on topics under public scrutiny such as the rule of law, the environment, and food safety created awareness within the general public and pushed them to focus on these social issues. Even though the media’s influence was limited and paled in comparison with the Internet which came later, the public awareness it created cannot be underestimated.

Third, media professionals gradually became aware of the ideas of freedom of speech and social responsibility. They have gained the realization that their role has changed from media worker into information disseminator, government watchdog, and spokesman for the masses. This awareness on the part of the media professionals also brought social changes in the areas of freedom of speech and social responsibility. Even though the results seemed immature in these areas during the initial stage, their inherent meaning is important: the explosive growth of the media has pushed the Chinese people to become more modern.

In terms of communication, the development of public media, especially their increasing openness, “enabled the society to move in the direction of modernity with the emphasis on people” (Wang 2013: 132). Although public media changed the social ecology to a great extent, their limits were obvious also, even before the advent of the Internet. As Marshall McLuhan pointed out, “The electronic media expanded the boundary of public arena on the one hand and surreptitiously reduced the room for criticism through unidirectional broadcast, monopoly of information, and routine on the other” (McLuhan 2000: 3). Although McLuhan’s statement is about the electronic media, it is by and large a fair assessment of the current condition of Chinese media.

2 How the Internet Engages Its Users

As a new form of public communication, the Internet’s arrival has influenced and changed the environment we live in and the way we live our life.

2.1 Portals and Websites

In the early days of the Internet, the Chinese virtual world was dominated by large-scaled portals such as Sina and Net Ease whose specialty was the gathering and integration of a large amount of information. They surpassed news websites such as Xinhuanet and People.cn in terms of timeliness, quantity, and comprehensiveness of information and were the largest virtual depots of news and information in China. Since the advent of we media, the roles of broadcaster and audience have been in a state of perpetual evolution; the anonymity of the audience weakened the broadcaster’s influence. The audience is affected more and more by its own inclinations and values. The Internet quantifies how interested netizens are in various things and sets new agenda for the traditional media.

However, at this stage, news was assembled and edited rapidly, and the workflow in the virtual realm was limited to a digest of newspaper content and copying and pasting. This modus operandi did not constitute a threat to the concept, operation, and profit model of the traditional mass media. Moreover, compared with the amateurish news gathering method of the virtual medium, the traditional media, with more than a hundred years of history, had much higher standards in terms of effective dissemination, information density, profitability, and professional ethics. Most traditional media did not have an inkling of the impending onslaught of the Internet at this time.

2.2 The Rise of Social Media

Social media dates back to 1979, when two professors of Duke University invented a user discussion system. Blogging was then invented in the early 1990s, allowing Internet users to publish articles to all, connecting authors and readers to form an intimate virtual community (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010: 59). Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter appeared subsequently, making social media the most important component of the Internet.

Newspaper reporters discovered quickly that the social media they had been using in an extracurricular way caused the rapid transformation of public communication and changed the way they practiced their profession. This was a subversive change.

The blog appeared in China for the first time in 2002; it was the first social medium. Compared with its more personalized Western counterpart, Chinese blogs had wider social influence and realized unprecedented breakthroughs. Its social meanings are multiple:

  1. 1.

    Setting Public Agendas

In Chinese blogs topics in the public arena receive more attention. When writer Han Han described in his blog how private car owner Sun Zhongjie fell victim to a phishing scheme by the Transportation Bureau in Minhang and was falsely accused of illegally transporting passengers for profit, his readers formed a “citizen investigation team” including reporters, lawyers, and merchants and successfully exposed the nefarious activities of some government officials of the Transportation Bureau.

In this incident, there was the setting of a public agenda, the close interaction between the blogger and his readers, the intervention of the competent authority, and the punishment of corrupt government officials. It shows that social media can use technology to involve their audience and provide the necessary conditions for setting a public agenda and achieve some social goals.

  1. 2.

    Breakthrough in Mentality

Unlike media professionals, bloggers do not have to be well-versed in the rules and regulations of traditional media because they fall outside of that jurisdiction. This allows them to be bolder and more trenchant on some subjects. They can pick up on the topics coming from traditional and new media such as newspapers, television, and Internet communities to lead the discussion on some important subjects and enable the general public to develop social mentality.

  1. 3.

    Change in Newsworthiness

The blogs emphasize the sharing of contents. What can catch the public’s attention and motivate people to share their own contents are often those topics which traditional media find unsuitable for publication, such as a gourmet recipe, or ruminations on one’s travels or the banalities of life. From the point of view of media professionals, these contents may indeed be too long, too detailed, or lacking in depth; but what is interesting is that people often prefer these writings because they are written by ordinary people, not reporters. Moreover, social media enable their audience to become part of their operation in an unprecedented way; this changes the values of media professionals and the standard of newsworthiness.

Blogs remained popular for several years. In 2007, Weibo began to encroach on the popularity of blogging in China much like what Twitter had done a year earlier elsewhere in the world.

Weibo is an informal mini version of the blog and comes from the translation of the English word for micro-blogging. It allows a user to publish a short text (generally fewer than 200 words) to everyone or a user-defined group of people and in a format similar to the blog. It is an open and integrated system accessible through cell phones or IM software, allowing users to send simple texts describing what they see, hear, or think; people use it to release emotions, record epiphanies, or entertain themselves (Tang 2009).

After the success of Twitter in 2006, this social media technology was introduced into China. Fanfou, Jiwai, and Tencent entered the competitive Weibo market in succession. Sina Weibo opened officially for business in 2009; even though its entrance was late, Sina became the leader in micro-blogging within six months due to the large client base, the successful history in operating blogs, and brilliant market strategy.

In the era of micro-blogging, everyone is a publisher of information; the power of the media is within everyone’s grasp and anyone can create his or her medium. New posts keep coming up on Weibo; it has supplanted the news flashes of traditional media and become the new model of mass communication for breaking news.

Compared with traditional blogging, Weibo’s interface is more functional and user-friendly. It can publish 140 words of plain text, and because the users can use it on a cell phone, they do not need to sit in front of a computer to post. Weibo is a mobile network platform having the 4A capability: anytime, anywhere, anyone, and anything. It has the following four characteristics:

  1. 1.

    Fragmentation of text. Weibo texts have no styles to speak of. A short plaintive cry, a banal detail, a pithy news item: texts like these fill the pages of Weibo. Texting from cell phones adds to the deluge of fragmented texts. But this is how Weibo was designed. Twitter accepts up to 140 letters while Sina Weibo’s limit is 140 Chinese characters. Fragmented content is the intended result. Many websites encourage this kind of chatter. One online group’s motto is “speak when you have nothing to say”. Taotao, one of Tencent’s chat groups, advises the participants that it feels good to get things off the chest.

  2. 2.

    Semi-real-time interaction. Unlike blogging, email, or IM, Weibo’s interaction is semi-real-time. Blogging and email are too slow and unsuitable for fast communication while IM is too fast and requires immediate reply. Weibo has found a happy medium between the two and satisfies a subtle need of interpersonal relationships.

  3. 3.

    We media for ordinary people. Weibo devolves the power of speech to the basic level and guarantees that everyone has the right to speak. It weakens the elitism of blogging and emphasizes its own plebification. Weibo protects people’s right to self-expression and self-revelation and it is easy to use.

  4. 4.

    The personalized narrative style. Compared with blogging, the user environment of Weibo is characterized by randomness and uncertainty in terms of time, space, and psychology. Weibo users need not ponder what they have to say; they can express their thoughts anytime. In contrast, bloggers express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas after careful consideration. Some researchers feel that Weibo satisfies the users’ need for off-the-cuff expressions while blogging satisfies their need for orderly expressions (Sun and Zhang 2008).

For breaking events, first-hand news is often published first in Weibo, which has become a new broadcast medium. It has some inherent advantages over traditional media.

First, it is timely and prompt. After a traditional blog entry is published, the blog’s writer has to review it and place the best entry on the top of the heap so that it has a better chance to be read first. Apart from this, the blogger can watch for comments posted by friends. In contrast, a Weibo user sees updated news not only of friends but of everybody. She can read updated information in a matter of seconds and give a response (Liu 2009).

Second, Weibo puts in place a huge collection of subjects. Many service providers on Weibo have keyword search capabilities. For instance, Sina’s homepage lists the hot topics of the day such as the most talked about celebrities, movies, and events. Users can select any number of topics and express their points of view, and a vast market of topics is born out of a chattering public.

Third and last, cell phones more ways to post. Practically all the Weibo service providers support cell phone posting. Users can microblog through SMS and the rate is the same as that for texting on their cell phones. Users can microblog 140 words anytime and anywhere, effectively quenching their thirst for self-expression. It is worthwhile to note that users can set topics of choice, such as those regarding democracy and work, through Weibo and BBS. Thanks to the digitalization of information transmission, it is very easy to duplicate information, and information can go viral online. Topics can show up in forums and other virtual communities all at once and become hot trends of the day.

But as we enumerate Weibo’s advantages, its shortcomings are also obvious. First, it is unorganized. Weibo pursues speed and brevity. Information is put together with disjoint and unedited words, images, and videos and cannot be arranged according to the readers’ preferences. Moreover, because everyone can be a medium, there is serious duplication and overload of information to the point where chaos can reign. In contrast, the traditional media organize their content according to specific rules and can offer more user-oriented services. Second, its breadth is limited. The traditional media are more authoritative; once information is published, its reach can be astonishing. In contrast, if a microblogger on Weibo has a small number of subscribers, unless his postings have some explosive content, they are unlikely to go very far. Finally, its information lacks reliability. Anyone who has a Weibo account can become a “reporter”. There is a deluge of information in Weibo currently. When the sources of information go up, its reliability goes down. The rumor about the demise of novelist Jin Yong was started by a user in Weibo. His posting was picked up and published by an editor of a news magazine using the official Weibo account of his organization. The news spread quickly, and even though it was corrected within a short time, the editor had to step down for this mistake. The strength of the Internet is that it has a diversified source of information, but there is ample room for errors also.

After the introduction of the various social media into the Chinese society, the ecology of the broadcasting industry has changed completely. The circulation, influence, and advertising revenue of the print media have reduced dramatically since 2014 while the electronic media have many big challenges in front of them. We are in the midst of the biggest media revolution since Johannes Gutenberg’s movable type. To be or not to be? Mass communication is in the midst of a cruel winter.

3 Internet Dependency and Social Alienation

“The media are extensions of man,” says McLuhan (2000: 8). Since the 1980s, the various media (newspaper, broadcasting, television, the Internet) have changed the way people accessed and received information and reconstituted people’s living environment and psychological experience.

3.1 Reconstitution of Social Interaction

In the information age, the Internet can satisfy people’s needs and support their less-common interests more conveniently. BBS imparts the sense of belonging to and identification with a community while micro-blogging enables people to get fast responses to their unedited chatter and thereby satisfying their needs for information, emotional release, and the sense of belonging. Microblogging and blogging provide the venue and method for self-expression and self-realization, and this is why many people are addicted to the sense of satisfaction that the Internet brings. Psychological studies have found that more and more people have emotional, familial, or social problems due to the excessively long period of time they spend online. This raises concerns not only for the psychologists, doctors, and social workers but also for the whole society.

How to use the Internet wisely is a lesson the younger generation has to learn in this information age. Studies have shown that Internet usage can have negative impact on teenagers in terms of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development. Students who are obsessed by the Internet may develop the tendency for sleep deprivation, anxiety, irascibility, and absenteeism. High school and university students are more prone to such problems. Some students spend their vacation online all day long, playing games or chatting with friends in social media (Zhou and Kang 2007). This over reliance on the Internet makes them unsuitable for real life and creates social alienation.

3.2 Social Alienation

A study finds that Chinese netizens suffer from a widespread sense of loneliness. This kind of loneliness can be either emotional or social and is closely related to Internet usage. The stronger the feeling of loneliness, the more a netizen relies on the Internet, and the more online applications he immerses himself in. Emotional loneliness is directly proportional to the impact on everyday life, emotional attachment to the Internet, and the time spent online. In contrast, social loneliness is directly proportional to online social interaction and working online. Apart from this, netizens tend to feel that the Internet can help them improve social interaction and keep negative emotions in check, and thereby reduce the sense of loneliness. But the level of this positive assessment differs markedly among individual netizens (Tian and Jia 2011).

What is interesting is that the Internet appears at first glance to expand social interaction by blurring the boundaries and restrictions of real-life interaction. People who lack real-life social interaction or the skills for it may find satisfaction in social media and chat rooms to compensate for that lack. They often have a higher degree of social alienation and are more prone to use the computer to complete their tasks rather than interact with other people. When their work requires the interaction with others, they prefer to do so through email. But this kind of interaction often increases the awkwardness of real-life social intercourse. The more they fail at real-life social interaction, the more they seek online connections.

The virtual environment of the Internet expands and enriches social interaction, but it also contravenes reality. “The anonymity in virtual interaction leads to a kind of secrecy which obviates the sense of responsibility and ethics that true identity necessitates” (Zhang et al. 2006: 303).

Empirical studies have found that reliance on the Internet tends to create awkwardness and alienation in real life. Some sociologists claim that overuse of the Internet increases loneliness and depression. Even if the user seeks social interaction in using the Internet, social involvement and the sense of happiness will decrease as a result (Kraut et al. 1998). Moody and others have found that time spent online can influence the feeling of loneliness and that long duration online causes high levels of emotional loneliness and low levels of social loneliness (Moody 2001). Morahan (2003) feels that Internet usage increases the sense of loneliness and that lonely people have more self-awareness online than in real life. Stoll and others have found that Internet usage can lead to social alienation and lower the users’ level of psychological health (Zhang et al. 2007).

When reliance on the Internet becomes extreme, it is addiction and no longer normal. Teenagers’ addiction to video games has raised concerns. Furthermore, we see that frequent reports and exaggerations by the media have created a fear of Internet addiction; some people regard it as a serious social problem akin to narcotics addiction and suggest curing it by putting them in rehabilitation facilities, applying electric shock, or confinement. This is an exaggeration of the side effects of Internet usage.

We ought to understand that social media is one of the most important applications of the Internet in China. There is pronounced stratification of netizens in social media, with each stratum behaving very differently from the others. Even though social media in China has not created any serious conflict with real-life social interaction, its influence is increasingly clear.

How should we view the influence of virtual interaction on real life? Sherry Turkle offers this suggestion: “We don’t have to refuse the life in front of the computer screen, or see it as a substitute of real life. We can use the community we created on the Internet to improve our lives away from the screen” (Turkle 1996).

4 Functions of Internet Mass Incidents

The timeliness and the multitude of channels and applications of the Internet facilitate the integration and dissemination of information; because of the Internet, social contradictions which traditional media was prevented from discussing are trotted out for everyone to see in the most striking and thorough way.

  1. 1.

    Venting of Public Opinion

The main reason for group incidents concerns the environment. 2010 Social Bluebook published by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences indicates that group incidents cause by environmental issues increased dramatically in 2009. On the list of the ten biggest group incidents concerning environment protection of the past ten years, six happened in 2009 and involved several million people.

What deserves a special mention is that people’s social mentality has grown during these incidents regarding disagreement over environment protection or risk assessment, such as dam building over Nujiang River or the waste incinerator in Panyu, Guangdong. They show increasingly that a key function of public media is the setting of social agenda. The functions of public media in social decision-making are threefold:

  1. 1.

    Its monitoring function. The Internet can serve as a monitor for hotspot issues. That it is interactive, timely, and decentralized enables users to participate directly in the production and broadcasting of information. The Internet can place under the spotlight events which traditional media consider secondary or can remove the obstacles for information dissemination which are set up by traditional media as a matter of policy. The audience of traditional media suddenly has a say in setting the social agenda; people can monitor environmental issues and become part of a social alarm system.

  2. 2.

    Its function as a platform. Through open and transparent discussions, the Internet can find solutions to social problems and foster democratic mentality and political participation.

  3. 3.

    Its supervisory function. The Internet pools the strength of its users, oversees the setting and implementation of the social agenda, enables the people to express their true opinions, and allows the decision makers to create policies according to the wishes of the people.

In the Not-In-My-Backyard Movement as exemplified by the Xiamen PX incident and the Shifang molybdenum-copper project, we can see that the Internet can provide a forum in which the conflicting parties can have a dialogue and the public can check and supervise the power of the government. As described by Hanferkamp and Smelser, social action is no longer restricted to street demonstrations or visits and letters to authorities; public media have an important role to play, including shaping new forms of social action. Participants become aware of the importance of public media in creating and shaping social events and attracting public attention (Hans and Smelser 1992).

4.1 From Sequestration to Penetration

One noticeable change in online group incidents is that popular opinions used to be sequestered from government opinions; now the two interpenetrate.

It is very clear that popular opinions are amply expressed on micro-blogging platforms such as Sina and Tencent. But generally speaking, the government is not used to or is afraid of confronting the public online. The Internet’s high degree of interactivity does not make it a good channel for communication as far as government officials are concerned; in fact, it feeds their fear of being questioned doggedly by the public. Zhu Huaxin of the public opinion research office at People.cn, said very succinctly during a conference on public opinions that there are two places for public opinions in China: one is the Party newspapers where the government expresses its opinions, and the other is online forums exemplified by Weibo where the public at large express theirs.

In 2012, People’s Daily opened its official micro-blogging account “People’s Daily V” on Weibo. People.cn followed suit and entered the micro-blogging realm as well.

Why did the two sets of opinions, one from the government and the other from the people, change from a state of sequestration to a state of interpenetration? Tan Chao, ex-fact checker of Sina who now works for People.cn, believes that “a large society should have only one place for public opinion. This place should combine the opinions of the government and of the people. The government and the people should not tear at each other, talk over each other, or keep safe distance from each other. This is the ideal situation of course. As of right now, the people are very proactive in expressing their opinions while the government is passive and scared; it should stand up bravely and dialogue with the people” (Zhou 2011). To accomplish this, Tan feels that the micro-blogging site of People.cn should promote change through communication. It has rolled out “People’s Express” to relate more to the general public; this online product is not only a window for the government’s voice but also a vehicle for people’s opinions. It places the emphasis on dialogue and wants to be a platform for communication. Such a change should not be viewed as a simple update of a website’s content. Both Xinhua News Agency and CCTV have also created Weibo content as a way of endearing themselves to the public. Xinhua Weibo’s “Political Inquiries on Weibo” encourages the general public to post questions to their representatives in the People’s Congress. A CPPCC member from Zhejiang posted one of his bills on Weibo and received more than 10,000 responses overnight. This shows clearly that the voice of the people can communicate and integrate with that of the government through the interactivity of social media.

5 Realizing the Chinese Dream

Party and national leaders have talked about the Chinese Dream on many different occasions, and this topic has become popular in public discourse. Scholars have also begun to study it.

5.1 Two Aspects of the Chinese Dream

Since Xi Jinping explained the Chinese Dream at the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition in 2012 (Xi 2013), this concept has undergone some changes during the dissemination process. On one level, there is a fleshing out of the concept from the abstract macro-level dream of a country and nation to specific industrial, entrepreneurial, and individual dreams with precise goals. On another level, it is the hope for advancement in the realms of politics, economy, culture, society, and environment. The Chinese Dream consists of the desire for strength, rule of law, progress, harmony, beauty, and happiness (Meng and Wang 2013).

Xi Jinping pointed out at the “Path of Resurgence” exhibit that the greatest dream of the contemporary Chinese nation was to realize a cultural renaissance, thus linking the Chinese Dream with a cultural rebirth. After Xi’s speech at the exhibition, People’s Daily published a total of nine editorials starting from March 17, 2013 explaining the concept, foundation, and path of the Chinese Dream. The ideas in these editorials included reform and innovation, patriotism, people’s strengths, improvement to people’s livelihood, and continued development, and the conclusion was that the Chinese Dream, in essence, is to make China prosperous and strong, rejuvenate the nation, and bring happiness to the Chinese people. Various official media soon followed, describing the path, spirit, and strength of the Chinese Dream, basically making it into a system of thought.

In contrast to this government version, the people also attempted to interpret the Chinese Dream. They translated the official parlance and macro-level narrative into popular stories and individual sentiments. Linking local government, industries, and individuals, the Chinese Dream no longer rests on the macro level. There have been many news stories discussing the Chinese Dream, the aeronautic dream, and my dream.

5.2 Diversity of the Chinese Dream

It is not a uniquely Chinese idea to use dream as a symbol for national development and spiritual pursuit. Le (2007) points out that the American Dream, whose core is the pursuit of personal wealth, economic growth, independence, and freedom, has been popular for a long time, while the Europeans’ emphasis on the quality of life has also touched a chord with the people of the world. Compared with these two aspirations, China takes the road less traveled and dreams on the collective level. It wants prosperity not for itself but for the whole world. The Chinese Dream is a dream of peace and sharing; it does not claim to be a universal value at the exclusion of all other values, nor is it a chauvinistic ideology to which only a large and powerful nation can subscribe.

But in official discourse, the Chinese Dream has carried strong political overtone from the beginning. This is because its creation and dissemination are indicative of political goals and sensitivity and its aim is public approval. It is interesting that the government wants to infuse official discourse with enthusiasm in order to unify public opinions, so it endows the Chinese Dream with profound spirituality and theoretical foundation as if it were something from an ideal world. But the Chinese public wants the dream to be tangible and realistic, and their hopes are more diverse. Resting somewhere between the ideal and reality, the Chinese Dream reveals clearly the convergence and divergence of government and popular discourses.

To continue in this vein, the integration or convergence of popular and official discourse has special significance for the Chinese Dream. As discussed earlier, there is gradual integration and interpenetration between the venues of official opinions and popular discourse. The Internet is not only a part of social media but a platform for democracy and modernity. Just like the conclusion reached by two scholars studying public media, “The new media, which is the integrated platform for both official and popular discourse, is an important public arena in which the public can reflect on the social condition, exchange views on all aspects of the society, and seek solutions for social problems” (Ma and Sun 2010). Even though restrictions still exist, the new media is able to function as a platform for political participation in a series of online social events such as the “7-23 EMU Incident” and “Netizens against Corruption”; it has an important role to play in building a civil society. The ultimate goal of the new media is to promote political participation and social change and to realize the Chinese Dream of a strong nation and happy citizens through the amelioration of political, economic, and cultural life.