A Research On Network Participation In Group Incidents

With the development of Internet, the sense of citizen participation is growing. Network participation has become an irresistible trend. Network participation breaks the situation of government monopoly of information and unified public opinion. Many non-mainstream political cultures begin to emerge, which reduces the recognition of the mainstream political culture and disrupt the centralized power structure.The authority of political system faces up with an unprecedented challenge. Network participation has been gradually recognized by the government in recent years and affected the central and local government decisions to some extent. However, because the grass-roots participation is the main participation style and participants do not have formal organizations, network participation can not serve as an independent force. Participants can only express their opinions and political views by dissimulating relevant information in order to attract public attention and influence government’s decision-making process.Due to the lag of network legislation, the existence of technology gap, participants’lack of responsibility and other factors, there are still uneven participation and non-rational phenomena after the occurrence of group incidents, which limit network participation’s impact on government decision-making. This situation hits citizens’enthusiasm and confidence to some extent, and prevents the development of democratic politics. Effective network participation must base on the socialist political system with Chinese characteristics and give full play to its advantages. As the reality is diverse, we should consider how to make the dispersed internet users get together to the maximum and endow them equal political rights.In order to make the network present an orderly and rational state, we must create more channels to encourage and guide Internet users directly or indirectly to participate in politics, express their own views and supervise government’s actions. The first part of this article is an introduction. The second part has analyzed the pro and con functions that network participation brings to the group incidents as well as the influence that group incidents brings to network participation through the present situation. The third part has analyzed network participation’s influence on group incidents in an occurred case. The fourth part has pointed out the questions of network participation those exist in the group incidents from the angle of the system, technical and the main body. The fifth part proposes some suggestions to improve the effectiveness of citizen participation in group incidents, such as we can take measures from the perspective of improving the network legislation, strengthening network supervising, providing technical support and cultivating mature Internet users.