Online Public Opinion And Public Decision-making Under A Dual Perspective Of Rights And Powers

Online public opinion is the expression of public opinion via the Internet, which is a succession and surpass of the public opinion expressed via traditional media and, it has being profoundly reformed the fundamental structure of public opinion. With the widening of the room for online speech and expression as well as the liberal development of speech governing system in recent years,"Internet politics"is gradually coming into being, and online public opinion has being caused concern and controversy for the fact that it is exerting an unprecedented impact on"exploding"social problems and social phenomena, especially on the aspect of public criticism and public decision promotion. The potential of"Public opinion through train"to public decision-making is unstoppable! Therefore a public decision-making predicament from the"non-acceptance"to"accept"is have to be faced. The resulting online public opinion on the impact of public policy and reasonable value for both existing problems causes widespread concern and controversy.Based on a clarification on the relevant concepts and a description on the phenomena in question, this paper places it research focus on the recognition of online public opinion and public decision-making, and a revealing of its background relationship between rights and powers. On the one hand, the paper theoretically develops the relations between online public opinion and public decision-making as well as its background connotation of rights and powers and their complicated linkages, based on which the"should-be"state of the relations between the foregoing two is proposed, on the other, it also analyzes, in the light of the states quo, the"is-being"state of the contradictions between the two sides. The paper probes into the contradictions between the democratic, scientific and rational requirements of public decision-making between the issues like Internet-user-structure, the online free-discrete-features, the emotional characteristics of online expressions and so forth, and that between the nature of the rightness, benefits and autonomy requirement of online public opinion and the negative elements in public decision making procedures, like a passive attitude towards online public opinion, a"self-serving"tendency, and a technical passiveness and deviation, and so on. This paper, respectively and accordingly, offers some reverse thinking and proposals.Through a multiple study, we found that: (1) both the online public opinion and public policy-making, and the areas of rights and powers contained in the former, are in a typical unity of opposites, the two sides share the characteristics uniform structure, being contradictive and being complementary, which means the two conflict with each other on the one hand and, being interdependent, mutually promoting and even being inter-transforming on the other; (2) the conflicts work as a"fine tuning"of social relations, a positive release of destructive energy, that is, its fundamental value is to pursue and realize social"harmony"and social"order"by way of adjusting the contradictions and conflicts. Therefore, in order to step out of the present difficulties of public decision-making in China and to improve social efficiency and welfare by means of negotiation and balancing, it is a should-be option to promote an integration of public decision-making and online public opinion, to seek a combination between rights and powers; (3) looking into the reality, we found that although there are shortcomings in the online public opinion, it is still the most extensive and dynamic form of public opinion at present; and although our public decision-making is facing lots of problems, it is still creating a brand-new age in history for its openness and democracy. The principal value of the interaction between online public opinion and public policy-making is that, through an unique online expression platform and a radical expressing way of being direct, it has being objectively promoting the consultative democracy in the process of public decision making and, providing a further call for the more comprehensive negotiation-decision-making model with the key point of"decision-making power plays an active role and public opinion rights plays a leading one". In the aim of constructing a inner harmony and balance, as well as avoiding precedent mistakes and flaws, a renewed relationship between"online public opinion and public decision making"and that of"rights and powers", which is established by the good integration of democratic negotiations and dialogues, deserves our expectation.