Literature Review on Internet Public Sphere from a Chinese Perspective

摘要

The theory of public sphere was put forward by Hannah Arendt and Habermas et al. in the late 20th century. With the development of IT, the mechanism of public sphere has been gradually extended from traditional media to the internet. For some social public issues which related to civil rights and interests but conflict with the traditional unspoken rules, more and more citizens express their views through the internet to create "public opinion" rather than "media opinion". In recent years, the discussion about the internet public sphere has increased; the political performance of internet public discourse has also grown in China. Based on analyzing part of the internet public sphere literature, the article is trying to clarify the connotation of this new theory, and explain the rise and construction of this new public sphere, then sum up the advantages and weaknesses by analyzing the performance of internet discourse in the internet events. Meanwhile, the author strives to seek equilibrium between the authent icities and virtual of the identity of internet users, which are the essential factors of the advantages and disadvantages for the Chinese public discourses.