Online voices may deafen us to silent majority
- Source: Global Times
- [03:09 February 04 2010]
- Comments
By Wang Yuan
This is the season for people's congresses and political consultative conferences at all levels. To benefit from the increasingly powerful online public opinion, netizens are being encouraged to participate in the sessions and move proposals.
Such participation in matters of governance, especially in these sessions, has become popular of late. Netizens look upon it as a broad avenue for common people to participate in the deliberation and administration of state affairs. For governments, this means adopting a new openness toward citizens. For media, this represents social progress and increasing transparency in governance.
These positive trends are in stark contrast to the comparatively poor communication between governments and citizens in preInternet China. Today, more than 384 million netizens are making their voices heard loud, and no one can neglect them. The Internet boom has revived and revitalized the communication channels.
However, in my opinion, this isn't the full picture.
Online public opinion, rather than traditional public opinion, is paid more and more attention. It seems that netizens' interests take priority in the public sphere. Is it because netizens make themselves heard? What of the silent majority?
In 2008, China's population was over 1.32 billion, and 384 million netizens account for 29.1 percent of it. Nonnetizens, at least most of them, still live in a world without Internet. In this respect, their lives are not very different from the preInternet era, when channels to express their interests and demands to higher authorities or appeal to the media for help were inadequate and ineffective. Today, in the Internet era also, they are hardly heard in public affairs.
They might, for example, be ecological refugees in Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, and in Shennongjia, Hubei Province. When issues of environmental protection and nature conservation occupy our computer screen, they were asked to transfer their fisheries and lumbering areas to natural reserve areas, and thus, they lost their source of livelihood. They are too poor to have a computer, and in fact, they know little about Internet
They could be farmers losing their farmland, and they receive much less online public attention than urban households relocated by demolished buildings.
They might be minorities who are struggling to keep alive their languages for passing on to the next generation when netizens are debating whether we should "worship" English. These are some of the nonnetizens without ways to express their demands.
The Internet has indeed improved the effectiveness of our political communication system. However, the fact is authorities pay more heed to online opinion because the netizens' voice is too loud to be ignored.
If the authorities really care about public interest and understand how to enrich and enlarge communication channels for the common good, they should not be unduly swayed by "online" opinion.
Meanwhile, the media, too, can help by coming up with more news that concerns the silent majority.
