A Study On The Citizen’s Right Of Expression In Social Media

Citizens’ expression right is an unfading and high-profile subject in constitutional jurisprudence.This paper investigates the value of“citizens’ expression right”,the obligation of state organs for guarantee and guidance,laws and regulations for exercise of rights and an improved environment for rights,by studying citizens’ expression in the new age of social media from the perspective of analyzing the essentials of rights and the characteristics of rights exercise in the great background of social media.In the part of theoretical foundations,publicity,participation and interactivity are all the important inherent characteristics of citizens either in terms of etymology,social evolution or modern political operation.Citizens have constitutional significance not only as holders of rights but also in participating in public life on their own.Traditional expression rights via medium have statutory,defensive and social features,and bridge many basic rights of citizens.As one of the basic human rights,it is the core for citizens to enjoy and exercise rights.With the booming of internet technology,social media along with upgrading of self-media and development of mobile internet technology has caused great changes in transmission of information via medium.The social media based on web2.0 thought and technology has made separation of time and space more obvious in the process of information transmission.It has the characteristics of crossing and rebuilding time and space.Based on vast-point-to-vast-point transmission features and hypertext technology of traditional computers,information transmission on social media has a multi-variant non-linear structure,facilitating individual users to collect information in a comprehensive,optional and customizable way.Different from the chaining channel of traditional internet media,social media crosses greater social distance and connect social capital based on the weak-ties chain in social relations.Social media has the physical characteristics of exchanging and transmitting information.It can connect the debating square in the city state of ancient Greek with the historical context of public forum in contemporary America,thus making it possible to have a public area in political philosophy theories.In a great country like China,the effects of public topics get magnified in public opinion field.There is low threshold and low cost to spread information on social media.Platforms for self-generated content have obviously promoted the realization of the right of access to the media.Internet lowers the cost of communication and transaction and created a network space for mutual benefit and sharing.After entering the age of social media,every person owns a “news agency” through platforms such as Weibo and has “Quasi news right”.In area of political participation,social media provides convenience for online right of speech,anti-corruption on Weibo and offline campaign.Chapter Three analyzes the constitutional significance of citizens’ expression right on social media,starting from the classical theory of freedom of expression.The expression right on social media is related to human’s dignity and can help realize citizens’ right to know,right to participate and right to supervise,which is embodied in Article forty-one of the Constitution “citizens have rights to criticize,suggest,complain,appeal and accuse functionaries of state organs”.Citizens’ expression right on social right has value to societies by promoting social harmony and stability.In a developing country of China,when coordinating culture,economy and social governance,citizens’ expression right on the platform of social media has inherent constitutional significance.Chapter Four is the guarantee and guidance of citizens’ expression rights on social media.Citizens’ expression right is not only a passive defense right of citizens but also a positive guarantee obligation of state governments.The exercise of expression right needs the guarantee and guidance of state organs.There is a profound case foundation in western countries,such as the principle of forbidding prior restraint,preferred position doctrine,principle of clarity,priority principle and relief principle.These principles mainly center on judicial guarantee.In this paper,guarantee of infrastructure and internet use right is believed to be the important obligation of state organs.The right to access to internet is a basis of citizen’s expression right on social media and can help better guarantee and promote citizens’ right to internet.Government governance and institutional measures for guaranteeing social media expression are sorted out in this paper.China has established an improved industry self-regulation mechanism and formulated industry information standards on social media,providing standard guidance for citizens to express their rights.The final part outlines weakness in guarantee mechanism,covering legislation,administrative supervision and judicial remedy.In the Chapter Five,laws and regulations concerning citizens’ expression right on social media are analyzed,and the theory of constraints on traditional media is the precondition for analyzing regulated social media.The basis and principles of citizens’ expression rights limit on traditional media are introduced,including the relativity of expression rights and constitutional requirements for constraints,to analyze constitutional theories for citizens ’expression rights constraints on social media in terms of the necessities,difficulties and principles of constraints.Laws and regulation cases in all countries for regulating citizens’ expression right on social media focus on analyzing regulation of speech in situation of terrorism,hatred speech and illegal disclosure of individual information.In Section 4,Chinese laws and regulations for citizens’ expression right on social media are analyzed together with cases.Chapter Six focuses on improving the environment for realizing Chinese citizens’ expression right on social media,aiming to expose problems of exercising expression right in constitution and putting forward measures and ideas for improving the environment where Chinese citizens’ expression right on social media is executed.Improving the realization environment cannot be separated from common governance and the system of participation in and deliberation of state affairs.In a complicated internet background of China,social media is a convenient tool for making mutual communication,sharing ideas,displaying personality and holding different views towards current affairs,as well as providing a broad platform for many talented and adaptive people on social media.The interest relationship in the society demonstrates the feature of punctate distribution with greater two time’s aggregation.As a result,social media gradually becomes an important platform for citizens to express their own opinions and make appeals.First,cross-industry effect under the principle of Internet State Sovereignty is still being explored,but Chinese government has been highly emphasized the concept of internet sovereignty for internet governance.When highlighting the principle of internet international sovereignty,there is still much room to explore how to ensure security and open wider to the outside world.Second,as internet space is an emerging space,social regulations and national laws are not yet mature,and legislation is still at a low level with changeable,complicated,opaque and less participatory features.The legal guidance lags behind,especially for individual cases.The second part is to improve institutional environment for guaranteeing citizens’ expression right.First,the constitutional thinking for social media governance is clarified together with results from accelerating national governance system,in order to modernize institutional efficiency and institutional arrangement.Second is to enhance technological and scientific level of social media governance,as existing social media management and industrial management cannot catch up with the changing situations.Regulation of internet information must confirm to constitutional freedom of expression and legislative goal of risk prevention.In addition,measures and strength of prior regulation must be proportional to the prevented risks.Finally,drawing on China’s grassroots community governance system,the platform dispute resolution mechanism of social media with community attributes is improved.The third part is the development of governance culture for guaranteeing citizens’ expression right on social media.First,a common governance culture should be cultivated for social media.Second,public areas should be the target for advocating improvement of public quality and performance.Public area is after all an ideal,which would be affected by economic interests and political power in reality.Although Weibo has indeed made the ideal public areas into a possibility,the construct of public areas shall be continuously improved and eventually institutional and system reform is needed for improving citizens’ rationality,independence and intellectual judgment.Third,soft law is put forward for cultivating self-organization culture of social media.“Soft law” on social media platforms is usually the code of conduct of business platforms themselves,though without coercive force of the state but according with the features of social media platforms.Social media business companies can establish soft law system based on its diversified production.This is conducive to developing a new type of social governance featured by independence,self-discipline,co-governance between the government and people,and government supervision.Under the premise of collaborative governance and rule of law,citizens’ expression right can be better exercised on social media.