The Negative Effects And Prevention Of Online Political Participation’s Group Polarization

With the rapid development of society informatization and the popularization ofInternet, mobile networks and other new media, a new era has come that everybodyowning a microphone from the media age, thus, the Internet has created a virtual publicspace out of the original public space. At present, China is in a period of socialtransformation, so the keenness of social contradiction and unsoundness of socialmechanisms help to promote group polarization in the network consensus representedby forum and community, which provide the implicit public opinion a way to release byonline mass incidents. Although sometimes the polarization of networking groups willpromote the event to get a reasonable solution, the accompanied birth of Internet mob,human flesh search, online fraud and network opportunism will do harm to the healthdevelopment of network consensus, the ordered citizen participation, and the process ofbuilding a network of democracy. In addition, group polarization in cyberspace will beeasily converted to social reality destruction, thus vicious mass incidents will occur inreality, which disrupt the normal order of society. All of which are not conducive to thecountry’s stability and orderly development.Firstly, on the basis of clarifying the norms of group polarization, politicalparticipation, political participation and other related concepts, the network of politicalparticipation and group polarization will be made clear.Then, importantly, the negative effects of network of political participation andgroup polarization will be analyzed from5aspects: Internet users to participate incollection of extreme emotional public opinion; the "collective unconscious" causesdistortions and extreme of network public opinion expression;"tyranny of the majority"to some extent clears up the function of "consultative democracy”; the “maskeddemocracy” brings the “network mob" to revelry; the strength of irrational online grouppsychology triggered the outbreak of mass incidents. Then the possible reasons ofnegative effects of online political participation and group polarization will be researched from three aspects, including netizen, government and society, and networkcommunication. To conclude, the main reasons of negative effects of online politicalparticipation and group polarization are netizen structural differentiation and lack ofrational thought, lack of governance and stimulation of social events, and the catalysisof network techniques and online media.Finally, this paper attempts to make some useful exploration from a practical level,to advocate the government should further improve the information disclosure,strengthen public opinion guidance and promote civic education, and call fornetworking groups to express objectively and rationally. And also hopes thegovernment, online media and network groups to form a harmonious interaction, toreduce the negative effects of online political participation and group polarization tosocial interests. This theoretical study is hoped to be able to play a guide role in thenetwork political participation of netizen, and thus contribute to the maintenance ofnetwork order, order participation of citizens, health development of network consensus,and peace of society.