An online forum of the third type: The case of Suzhou’s Hanshan Wenzhong Forum

Abstract

An online public forum could be a concrete site of the public sphere and an emerging space to be cultivated for deliberative democracy. Built on this premise, this article analyzes the case of the Hanshan Wenzhong Forum, an online forum designed and operated by the Suzhou municipal government, and discusses its potentials as a public space of the third kind, namely, differentiable from the kind exemplified by the state-run media or that seated in civil society. The research shows that given its design, this forum does not possess the ideal attributes of publicness. However, with a strong backstage supporting system, the municipal government has utilized the forum to respond quickly to online discussions, attend closely to public sentiment, and monitor its policy implementation in certain areas. More importantly, forum participants have brought issues of their private realm to the online public space and, in some cases, transformed them into public issues, as their posts incite public discussions and facilitate dialogues on such issues. Together, these features reveal potentials of the online public space of this type in enabling “authoritarian deliberation.”