Public Perspective Of The Network As A Political,

People tend to look at the contributions Internet makes,especially to political sphere in a brand-new way since Sun Zhigang Event. But, there is yet no concensus reached inside academic circle on whether Internet can act substantially in politics while promoting social changes. Optimists hold that Internet encourages the public's participation in politics and thus helps push forward political democratization, while pessimists believe in the non-substantial role it will play due to constraints of the quality of netizens and the present system and institutions. This research is for the possibility of Internet's active contributions to politics based on analyses of its properties of virtuality, openness, equality, participation, and interactivity, its influence on governments and the public, the particular developmental environment in China and interrelation of them all.Internet is believed to contribute to politics in an all-round way. First, Internet enables equality and openness among the public, opinions and advices on political affairs are finding more outlets, convenient discussions are made possible, too. Second, Internet enhances negotiation between government and the public, serving as a platform on which the government easily releases regulations and policies, and agreements are reached through discussion and negotiation.The above-mentioned contributions by Internet are achieved through public opinion online, the general model of which is:the public expresses opinions on political affairs online; diversified opinions form online public opinion; its great impact draws attention of state-level and the opinions are taken into account in decision making. However, there is uncertainty for this model because online public opinion is a soft power, and therefore, an institutional guarantee for state-level response to it is absent. So, an institutional guarantee is desirable if more active role for Internet is needed. This research explores in depth how online public opinion gains access to the process of national law and policy making. And it is pointed out that a change in ruling philosophy should be realized so that online public opinion is emphasized and actively responded to.The paper, by analyzing the status quo of the present civil society in China and the publicity of the public sphere constructed by traditional media, concludes that the great political impact of technically instrumental Internet resulting from tremendous public zeal in online participation in politics, may stem from the facts that the civil society is underdeveloped and the public sphere lacks publicity. Internet, however, compensates partly for the lack of organizations in the civil society and realizes in a sense some functions that civil society should perform. Other reasons are:the equal and open Internet extends the publicity of media-based public sphere to some extent; the realization of political justice represented by public involvement online meets the public's needs of persuing social equality and justice.Of course, every coin has two sides. On one hand, Internet plays positive roles in political sphere.Such factors as social environment and the differences of the public in structure and action limit its influence, on the other. Sometimes there may be negative influence for Internet on national political life. But, this research holds that it is natural difficulty commonly seen in any developmental process and is to be settled with the enhangcing of the public's political literacy and participant ability. The internet will make much more c5 to national politics.