Research On The Impact Of Internet Public Opinion To The Public Policy Process

With the gradual progress of Chinese social transformation, the diverse interests of the demands made people more intense on self-expression and participation in the process of making policy, the government are facing more challenge on public decision-making. Under such background, the Government department must change the way of public policy-making and fully consider the public opinion. Along with Chinese Internet technology developed rapidly and more, the cyberspace has become a new public domain and formed the Internet public opinion with huge influence, which is characteristic with lots of interactions and exchanges between people. As one of the most important forms of public opinion, public opinion on Internet had already demonstrated special advantages on information dissemination and public opinion expressing with the aid of equal, opening Internet platform. Public opinion on Internet, which is characteristic with anonymous, hypothesized and poly tropism, opened the new channel for people to express their own opinion, discuss public affairs and participate public policy adjustment. At present the government department has already attached high importance on the Internet public opinion, they has also set up some kind of technical institutes used for collecting and monitoring Internet public opinion. From the hot spot event which occurred in cyberspace recent years, we saw that the public opinion on Internet has had the major impact on public decision-making, and have played an irreplaceable role in every aspect of policy process.Based on describing the theory and defining the core concepts, this paper focus on the influence of Internet public opinion on the public decision-making. On one hand, the paper used cases to help explore the role that the Internet public opinion played in the aspect of "input","transform","output" in policy process, this paper also showed the unique advantages which the Internet public opinion act in these processes. The Internet public opinion brings new issues for the government and reduce policy agenda’s startup time. It also provides people a platform for political participation to realize democratic and scientific policy, meantime public opinion on Internet provides a surveillance environment for policy implementation.On the other hand, based on the the positive role of plays in the policy process, this paper investigated on the factors that Internet public opinion affect the policy process. As the subject with a non-rational feature, the object was uncontrollable and the content was discrete which public opinion had, the paper also discussed the imitation that the Internet public opinion represented on policy process. the structure of the Internet users is lacking of representation, the network populace are non-rationality, informations on Internet are usually false and so on. All of these problems brought difficulties to government department in making public decision. Based on the above two points, this paper propose some corresponding constructive suggestions and thinking in view of all sorts of limitations. In order to full displaying the positive impact of Internet media and avoiding its negative effects, the government department need to regulate public opinion on Internet by making effective rules and leading guidance. It is necessary to unit the strength of both the mass media and the public so as to make good use of the "double-edged sword" of Internet.