Political Oversight Function Of The Network Of Public Opinion

Nowadays, an ever-increasing number of people discuses public affairs and supervises government and officials on the Internet. One point of view is that Internet public opinion is an effective tool to supervise government, so promoting Internet public opinon supervision is a shortcut to China’s political democratization. While the other point of view is that rumors and radical opinions prevailing online are hazardous to political stability. Therefore, this paper focuses on the problem that whether the expression of public opinion on the Internet can supervise government effectively without increasing political instability.Firstly, this thesis builds a database to collect the important cases of Internet public opinion supervision, and analyze the different types of effects of supervision. Then the paper finds out that not all cases of Internet public opinion supervision is effective, and the actual results isn’t due to the guarantee of law or institution, but depends on the pressure of the public opinion and the consciousness of government officials.Secondly, the thesis analyzes why Internet public opinion supervision can generate actual results in some cases without the guarantee of the law or institution. The characteristics of the progress, mechanism and field of online public opinion lead to prevalence of rumor, human flesh search engine and radical opinion. The rumors force official to announce information, human flesh search engine punish officials who anger the netizens without the participation of judiciary, and radical opinion provoke netizens focus on an event and force government to respond. So even without the guarantee of law or institution, the Internet public opinion supervision is still valid via the effects of rumor, human flesh search engine and radical opinion. However, rumor, human flesh search engine and radical opinion also have negative effects which pose great threats to political stability.Finally, the thesis reviews contemporary democratic theories to look for a solution for the dilemma between political participation and political stability which is brought by Internet public opinion supervision. The pluralist democracy theory and the deliberative democracy theory provide different ways to solve the problem, but neither of them can let the online public opinion supervise government effectively and maintain political stability.To sum up, Internet public opinion supervision exists outside the formal channels of political participation, which lead to its effectiveness mainly depend on rumor, human flesh search engine and radical opinion. Although Internet public opinion supervision expands the channel of political participation, it do potentially threatens political stability. Meanwhile, The characteristics of Internet public opinion supervision decide that it is impossible to solve the dilemma by self-improving. So expanding other forms of political participation is the only way to keep political stability.