Public Opinion Supervision Research Articles

The Battle of Microblogging for Legal Justice in China

Microblogging has a special appeal not only to Internet users in China who are keen to voice their opinions in a fast and easy way, but also to Chinese rulers who see microblogging sites as a giant magnetic field for them to tap into and to mold public opinions. In fact, since the 1980s, “public opinion supervision” has been on the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party. Yet, by the time of the 21st century, armed with the Internet, public opinion supervision has evolved into a powerful phenomenon with a life of its own. At its present time, the strange twist of logic is that the press is still tightly controlled by the Community Party but public opinion has been roaming wildly on the Internet, and creeping into the court rooms. To capture the above dynamic, this paper studies the top 20 events discussed in blogs, microblogs and online discussion boards in China between 2008 and 2012, and analyses the extent that public opinion has influenced the investigation and judicial outcome of cases. This article focuses on the intricate relationship between the Party, the judiciary, the Internet and the netizens. It argues that the Internet has transformed public opinion supervision into a form a public opinion monitoring. The prowess of the netizens lies not in their ability to gather information but in being an active power to interpret, to associate and to transform the plight of their fellows into legal narratives. One of the biggest challenges now, perhaps, is to ensure public opinion can be a form of monitoring, untainted by the supervision of the authorities.

The study on the Coal Mine Safety Integrated Monitoring and Early Warning System DesignUsing the S-MAC Protocol

Network monitoring system is handled by the automatic collection of web content, sensitive word filtering, intelligent clustering classification, topic detection, thematic focus, statistical analysis, a number of links to realize the need of the supervision and management of network public opinion, and ultimately the formation of public opinion, special reports, analysis reports, statistical reports, decision-making and management have complete control of public opinion, the dynamic, to make the right to guide public opinion, provide an analytical basis. The current monitoring system has some drawbacks such as small monitoring scope and less real-time. Coal mine safety monitoring and early warning systems are designed based on wireless sensor network in this paper. This system realized channel access to S MAC protocol, and transmitted environment information collected such as CO, CH4, temperature, humidity and my roof pressure, etc. to the monitoring station and realized real-time monitoring of the mine working environment parameters. Modeling simulation is performed on the wireless network structure by applying OPNET software, and the results show that in the wireless transmission condition, 20 nodes sent 1000 data packets, more than fifty of which are received. Wireless transmission network performs well.

Truth, Fair Comments, Immunity and Public Opinion Supervision: Defenses of Freedom of Expression in Chinese Right to Reputation Lawsuits

This paper examines the latest developments in the Chinese law on the protection of reputation and the application of defences to reputation infringement claim, and considers the implications of the different defence approaches for freedom of expression in China. The research shows that the issue for Chinese law and the judiciary is not the lack of legal protections for freedom of expression and press freedom per se, but rather the necessity of establishing a clear, specific and coherent legal framework, which will operate to guide the courts and limit their discretion. Only when this occurs will the Chinese legal system be in a position to ensure that there is no preferential rulings by the courts when attempting to resolve any conflict between the right to freedom of expression and the individual’s right to respect for reputation.

The Judicial Reform in China: The Status Quo and Future Directions

This article shows that Chinese adjudication is in a dilemma: on one hand, the judicial discretion is extensive; on the other hand, public opinion supervision is adopted to control the discretion. In fact, the public opinion and judicial discretion could co-exist and compliment one another. There is no objective and stable framework regulating both. There are attempts aiming to completely negate the judicial discretion, such as computer sentencing. A strange logic of judicial reform exists in China: either eliminating the judicial discretion through such mechanical methods as computer sentencing in the hope to guarantee judgment in conformity with the law; or resorting to the arbitrary external power intervention or public opinion supervision to constrain the judicial discretion, resulting in a new form of discretion. In the author's opinion, the critical nexus of institutional designing of good governance is an independent judiciary following the principle of procedural fairness. Therefore it is necessary for China to first establish the courts' authority through judicial reforms, laying the institutional foundation of rule-of-law. Then comes the supervising and checking of the legality of the government power. More importantly, an independent judiciary functions as a neutral arbiter of conflicting interest groups and a third-party enforcer of contracts, which enhances the predictability of market transactions and safeguards fair competition. Compared with structural shift of political power, judicial reform is relatively less difficult and more practical. If judicial reform dooms to fail, how is it possible for a comprehensive political reform to succeed? It is admitted that the judicial reform is subject to the overall power arrangements, nevertheless, it is still probable that we resort to judicial reform, as a breakthrough or reference, a gradual switch on the transformation of political power structure, centering on fundamental requirements of rule-of-law. This roadmap, of course, has preconditions, that is, that the ruler has adequate practical rationality and that society reaches consensus on rule-of-law.

Alliance and Tactics among Government, Media Organizations and Journalists: A Description of Public Opinion Supervision in China

This article analyzes a case of media supervision in China. The case shows that in the context of economic and bureaucratic decentralization, central and local governments as well as central and local media have respective interests in what is known as 'public opinion supervision'. The article concludes that the development of public opinion supervision (yuiun jiandu) is a result of strategic alliances among government bodies and the media. However, in a specific media supervision event, every party involved will evaluate their own potential gains and losses as well as their relationship to the other parties concerned and make decisions accordingly. The result of such deliberation between the party-state and the media propels the development of a public sphere in China. The different interests and goals of central and local government and media institutions, and the dynamic restructuring of power and interests in a society undergoing dramatic transformation create significant space for public opinion supervision in contemporary China.

Research on the Stiff Function of Network Media Taking Network Media Reports on Male Teachers as Examples

In order to research on the stiff function of network media, this paper selects a special group-male teachers as research objects, analyzes comprehensively from the perspective of communication science, summarizes how the image of this group is set up in network media and what kind of communication effect is generated, and makes suggestions, which are expected to be beneficial for network media to exert effective function in public opinion supervision.

Grassroots political reform in contemporary China

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction: Historical Reflections on Grassroots Political Reform in China Elizabeth J. Perry and Merle Goldman 2. Village Elections, Transparency, and Anticorruption: Henan and Guangdong Provinces Richard Levy 3. The Implementation of Village Elections and Tax-for-Fee Reform in Rural Northwest China John James Kennedy 4. Fiscal Crisis in China's Townships: Causes and Consequences Jean C. Oi and Zhao Shukai 5. Direct Township Elections Lianjiang Li 6. The Struggle for Village Public Goods Provision: Informal Institutions of Accountability in Rural China Lily L. Tsai 7. Inadvertent Political Reform via Private Associations: Assessing Homeowners' Groups in New Neighborhoods Benjamin L. Read 8. Civil Resistance and Rule of Law in China: The Defense of Homeowners' Rights Yongshun Cai 9. Hope for Protection and Hopeless Choices: Labor Legal Aid in the PRC Mary E. Gallagher 10. Is Labor a Political Force in China? Ching Kwan Lee 11. Between Defiance and Obedience: Protest Opportunism in China Xi Chen 12. In Search of the Grassroots: Hydroelectric Politics in Northwest Yunnan Ralph Litzinger 13. Public Opinion Supervision: Possibilities and Limits of the Media in Constraining Local Officials Yuezhi Zhao and Sun Wusan Notes Contributors Acknowledgments