Research On Network Group Events

The wide coverage and deep penetration of Internet has started an unprecedented transmission revolution. In China, through internet, netizens participate in the politics by using network as platform and media to influence the reality. This kind of political participation has composed a huge overturn of the traditional political participation. The inner appealing characteristics, operation method and momentum mechanism has shown the distinctive feature. The brand-new time-space environment composed by the transmission technology reform mixed with special context of social transition has confronted the nation with new environment.Network group event is the product of the interaction between social transitional period and new media rapid development. In the factual perspective, the event reflects the power game between different behavioral subjects based on certain fact and objective interest. In the virtual perspective, the game lies in the information and meaning, the fighting for explanation rights and definition rights as the core and comes into formation in the merging of two trends of globalization and individualization. The research hereby based on the empirical studies, summarizes the general characteristics of network group event in the aspect of event type, event direction, public inter-relationship, first release media, government responding strategy.The research shows that in the social transitional period, the group hatred formation, right consciousness and emergence of public opinion and new crisis rising from the risky society are the social context of network group event formation and development. Molded by the new media technological reforms, the media space featured with aggregation disembedding、polarization, promotes the socialized links with individual participation, time-space rebuilding of collective actions, re-centralization of media power. The transmission process of network group event is the multi-subject game. The inner momentum lies in the interaction between disintegrated traditional media and newly-rising opinions leaders. In the process of transmission, the dramatic plot and symbolized expression compose the information text features of issue construction and aim to form the inner mechanism of boundary activation and emotional mobilization. The inappropriate responding measures by the government, as the important parameter in the transmission context, will promote the upgrade and extension of the network group event.The research also reflects that in the network group event, the public virtual participation has the inclination of turning to factual participation. In the two dimensional space, the interchange of public participation composes the new characteristic of network social political participation. The online and offline interaction is the important component of network group event and the specific reflections of influences on realistic life, the important characteristic to differentiate from general network media and opinions. The social multi-subject interactive strategy, the establishment of real space action network and social organization intervention are the necessary condition of the online and offline interaction formation and development. The open feature of the cyberspace has make the cross-class and cross-region participation possible and has form a relationship with psychology, emotion and interest among a wider group of people, which has made the participation behavior more coincident, random and collective and promote the organization pattern and operation mechanism from two-dimension to three-dimension. According to the ways of network group event influencing the social reality, the research summarizes the group action pattern, the decision-making pressure pattern and rumor spreading pattern to form an analytical framework of analyzing the network group event mechanism.Based on the three dimensions of netizen structural variation, the change of social trend of thought and the reform of transmission technology, the research studies the development of network group event, and analyzes challenges faced with the network social management in the macro-environmental aspect, medium-mechanism aspect, and micro-practical aspect based on the quantitative and qualitative research conclusion. The research proposes the principle strategy to respond to the new media governance environment in the perspective of innovating social management, updating the explanation framework and implementing classified direction and promoting information opening-up. The research reflects that the network group event shows the inner power between the ever-rising public political participation and national system response and also has the possibility to conversion from non-institutional participation to institutional participation. The government should experience a process of adjustment, conversion, study and updating in the adaptation and control of new-media dominant environment, in order to institutional progress from the random response to quality improvement.