Deliberative Democracy And Micro-power: A Research On Virtual Civil Society

The global revival of the philosophy and practice of "civil society" in the1990s isbasically synchronous with the expansion of the Internet on a global scale. Politicalapplications of the Internet and its effect on structure, function and processes of civilsociety inevitably requires us to deeply explore the impact of the Internet on civilsociety in the background of technology-society relations. The major impact of theInternet on civil society could be ultimately explained by what we called "virtual civilsociety" by introducing the spread of deliberative democracy and the strengthening ofthe micro-power of political actors. The deliberative democracy is a very importantdemocratic mechanism in the formation of the virtual civil society, which influencespublic affairs decision-making and the birth of the virtual civil society by using thepublic policy agenda setting and public opinion forming of the Internet media.Micro-power is a very important power mechanism in the formation of the virtual civilsociety, which is owned by individual citizens and interest groups, mobilizes resourcesbased on social capital and supervises the national macro-powers. The "virtual civilsociety" reshape the relationship between the country and the society: On one hand, itcontributes to enhance the ability of citizens to dialogue with the nation; to increase thesupervision and restriction of social rights on state power at the same time; on the otherhand, it is also useful for the country to increase its attention on public participation inthe public decision-making process and to exert control on the technical basis of thevirtual civil society (the Internet). Network regulation is a double-edged sword withtheoretical rationality and practical possibilities. In theory, it not only contributes toform "the third way" between state and society by incresing the positive interactionbetween them, but help to form a "third force" by reconcilling public opinion andofficial opinion. In practice, the implementation of virtual civil society relies on the good functioning of the online media and virtual communities.