A Research On Online Public Sphere Affecting The Path Of Public Decision

Public sphere, a domain to regulate a nation and its society, is an important field in Social Study. With the advance of the network technology, online public sphere provided a new media for the exchange of public opinions and expressions in cyberspace, and the study of which caught eyes of many scholars. This study analyzed the structure, identity, function and the way of functional realization of online public sphere on the case studies point of view, by utilizing document method, data processing and event analyzing method, etc. The study found that, compared with the traditional public sphere, online public sphere has its unique features, structure and operational mechanism.First, as the extension part of the traditional public sphere on the internet, online public sphere display its unique trait on space access, the way of exchange, communication and keeping information, setting topic, and main component. Secondly, as public sphere, online public sphere's basic structure can be generalized through physical space, associations, media and social movement which are the basic structure of public sphere. Thirdly, the functions of online public sphere which is created by interaction between people on internet mainly display on the following aspects:improving the ability of public accessing information, increasing the convenience of public exchange, improving the ability of public participating in politics and steadying traditional public sphere, etc. All these functions affect actual society with online public opinion. There is a specific model between actual society and online public sphere. They form a strong and thereby influence public decision. There are two ways that online public sphere affects public decision:the one is that online public sphere as a independent strength impacts the public decision. This way is achieved on the premise that all traditional media takes silence on some public events or issues. But it's rarely happened in reality. The other way is that the online public opinion transforms into public opinion and thereby affects public decision. In the aspects of influence, the second way is the main influence way.Future study on the path model for the impact to the public decision from online public sphere will be further identified, with the online public sphere gradual maturity. In the practice sense, the study of online public sphere could provide favorable basis and theoretic support to the scientific decision-making for public decision making system and to the regulation of internet development.