A Study On Characteristics And Functions Of Cyberspace Public Opinion

The swift and violent development of the worldwide internet technology since 1990s has not only greatly accelerated the process of globalization, but also been showing its media essentiality and brought a global revolution of news media. However, the real epochmaking significance of internet for China is lying not only in its media essentiality, but also in its great function of producing and spreading public opinion. As "a place for opinions" and "a place for people's voices", the internet makes the ordinary Chinese people own such an equal and broad rights to say for the first time, which makes the Chinese intellectuals' cultural and political oppression endured for hundreds of years get an immense release which has never happened before. And this, would bring the expression history and supervision history of the public opinion of China into a new page. Pleasantly, our government has showed a positive and supporting attitude towards the expression of the ordinary people's opinions and the supervision of the public opinion on net. The cyberspace public opinion has entered in the mainstream vision of China. In addition, the large influence of cyberspace public opinion has been revealed in the biggest degree of these years in a series of hot press issues in 2003 such as Sun Zhigang affair, the affair of several persons being cracked by BMW, the affair of Japanese's wench in Zhuhai, the case of Liuyong, etc. Therefore, it is of great practical and theoretical value to study cyberspace public opinion at this moment. This paper has a systematic study on the concept, formation, characteristics and functions of cyberspace public opinion.