Balancing The Supervision And Free Speech On Bulletin Board System

The fast growth of the Internet has made BBS a new channel of public opinion expression and an access for the government and the CPC to the real situation and public opinion, thus improving the government functioning. Therefore, it is a pressing task for both the government and web media to have a good understanding of the relationship between the free expression and social security and achieve a good interaction between the government, media and netizens.This thesis studies the relationship between the freedom of speech and security in the BBS, the self-correction of the web, as well as the coordination between the professional control and the political control.In this era of Internet, the political participation shows new features. All participants are equal. There is direct democracy. Technology plays a leading role. And the Internet has made control over political participation more difficult than ever. Netizens'participation into the policy-making process improves the legitimacy of the government's functioning and there is a supervision over the government's performance. In the mean time, a smooth information flow is the basis of a stable society.The thesis makes analysis on ideas by Chinese and foreign experts on the relationship between the freedom of speech and the public interest and compares opinions on the limit of the freedom of speech.The thesis introduces the concept of political control. Under the planned economy, the state imposes strong political control on press. Since the reform and opening-up policies were adopted, there has been a shift from"a strong government vs. a weak community"into"a strong government vs. a strong community."The government tends to have"principle control"over the press. As the public has more, easier access to information through the Internet, it is hardly possible for any government to control the byte-based media information in the way it did for atom-based media information conveyed on papers, broadcast and TV. That shows the necessity in reforming the way of supervising the press. A hypothesis is proposed here. It is true that the web opinion market does not always work well. However, direct or indirect intervention from the government is not the cure. Empirical analysis has proven that the balance and coordination between the government's intervention, self-discipline of web sites, and netizens'self-consciousness is the only way out.Here comes the conclusion on how to solve the management dilemma for the government. Media should not be regarded as a tool of ideology. Web media's role in offering various ways of information transmission should be recognized and freedom should be guaranteed to web media within the policy and the law.In the case study of this thesis, a comparison is made on the Internet management in several countries with more attention to the US model of the content control on the Internet.Then the Strong Nation Forum (Qiangguo Forum) of the People's Daily Online offers a particular example. An in-depth review and probe are made into the"Gao Yingying Incident"to lead to the verification on how efficiently the self-correction of the Internet public opinion can work and how important it is for a web site to contribute to the opinion-shaping.While the Internet brings us benefits, it also brings challenges. Taking the new traits of China's Internet development in the transitional period into the account, the thesis tries to the find the solution to the issue on what can be done to manage the public opinion on the Internet in a more scientific way. The purpose is to achieve a positive supervision while avoiding a negative supervision so that a good interaction between netizens, web media and the government is made possible.