The Rise of internet Participation: Development, Characteristics and Political Influence of China's Self-media

Abstract: 

China has been connected to the Internet for 26 years since 1994. Over these years, Internet technology has continued to innovate, which has profoundly affected structure of politics, economy and culture. The rise of self-media is one of the important signs of the development of Internet in China. These self-media mainly includes BBS, Blogs, Micro-blogs, Wechat, Vlog, etc.. With the increasing prosperity of economy and the development of internet technology, China's public participation, especially the Internet participation, has been significantly improved. Through the study of the development process and key events of China's self-media, this paper firstly focuses on the level and extent of network participation to strengthen the public's political awareness, ability and effect. Through the study of the development process and key events of China's self-media, this paper firstly focuses on the level and extent of Internet participation to strengthen the public's political awareness, ability and effect; secondly, it studies the measures taken by the government in response to the public's political participation; finally, it analyzes the interactive mode of government's administration and public's political participation in the process of modernization of China's governance through the case study of “Building County-level Media Convergence Center”. The conclusion of this study is that the rise of self-media continues to deconstruct the traditional government propaganda mode and brings great pressure to the government administration; with the improvement of the government's ability to use Internet technology, the effectiveness of political participation released by the self-media has been continuously compressed; to a certain extent, the self-media has expanded the public space and provided opportunities for China's governance modernization.