On The Influence Of Social Media On China 's Governance

The fundamental aim of this thesis project was to assess the potential impact of Social Media applications on the governance in China. For this purpose the society-centric definition of governance concept was selected. In this way impact of the social media on the topics such as policy-making, or the relations between government and society in China was contextualized within the society-centric governance concept. Here, complex environment of the society-centric governance must be taken into consideration. To be more precise, under the society centric governance concept it is assumed that government is no longer the sole center of the power, and its authority is continuously challenged by the different societal actors. Moreover, government is no longer operating within clearly determined territorial boundaries and no longer deals with specific, stable community. As literature review on adoption of Social Media in China illustrates intrinsic characteristics of this group of applications are exaggerating the complexities of governance environment.For better understanding of these processes we utilized the deliberative policy analysis framework of Martin Hajer. Following the deliberative analysis, first we identified the main story lines that structured the online discourse on Yueyue case that was selected as a case study. In order to assess whether deliberation on Weibo on this matter has impacted the actual policy making, I investigated whether the particular story lines have achieved discursive hegemony. Discursive hegemony of specific story line is accomplished if story line achieves discourse structuration (when actors will use it as a main reference) and discourse institutionalization (when discourse is translated into the impact on the government policy-making, like adoption of new law or other specific decisions). The results of analysis indicated that two story lines, namely the moral degradation story line and legal system story line dominated the Weibo deliberation, and as such achieved discourse structuration. Then the analysis of government subsequent actions revealed that on the level of political discourse both story lines structurated the government bodies’comments and vocabulary. Moreover, by observing the government actual policy making steps, it was revealed that both moral degradation and legal system story lines were institutionalized in terms of specific policy actions and documents. In this way, by utilizing analytical tools of deliberative policy analysis, given thesis project discovered the way deliberations in the Social Media applications, like Weibo, impacting policy-making in China. Moreover, proceeding from concept of’discursive settings’, this thesis looked into the question of possible impact of the social media on the government and society communication. Also the potential challenges posed by Weibo to the governance pattern in China were investigated. In this context it was revealed that Social Media applications owing to their informal and open characteristics can facilitate more ’informal’and’emotive’pattern of communication between the government and society.Besides, on a higher level of analysis, I argue that Social Media applications, like Weibo enable more interactive mode of policy making, which clearly contradicts with traditional, government-centric mode of governance. In this mode of policy-making, the political problem itself has a various interpretations, and as a result policy-making operates with open problem definition. In this context not only the government, but also society has a capacity to influence on the final definition on what should constitute the political problem.Finally the challenge of Social Media for the governance in China can be seen in that this group of applications can facilitate the emergence of what was called as a "community of fate", and thus create a significant pressure on a particular policy issue. The main challenge for the governance pattern here is that Social Media applications make it possible to mobilize significant number of people that are not constrained by territorial or administrative boundaries. The sole denominator uniting these people was a common political issue and availability of platform (Weibo) to deliberate on it.