Net Inclusion: New Media’s Impact on Deliberative Politics in China

Abstract

What is the role of new media in driving political change in China? How do we understand the interaction of rapid increases in connectivity, regime censorship and democratic outcomes? This article seeks to assess the democratic implications of new media in China through the lens of three key and nested criteria derived from general theories of deliberative democracy: information access, rational-critical deliberation and mechanisms of vertical accountability. The key finding is that connectivity expands political opportunity. How this opportunity is exploited is up to users, who often vary widely in their political preferences, values, and norms of behaviour. The results are multiple mechanisms of change taking place simultaneously and the development of a more interactive and pluralistic public sphere. While China obviously still has to develop far more formalised and institutionalised mechanisms for managing state-society relations, political pluralism in the form of online deliberation might be considered a foundational condition for a more interactive and liberalised political order rooted in greater public deliberation and societal feedback. Moderate forms of discourse and societal feedback are tenuous and increasingly exist in a chaotic and diversified online discourse defined equally as much by new methods of authoritarian propaganda and virulent nationalist ideas.