The Development of E-governance in China by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811310140
Publisher: Springer Singapore

1.4 Maturation Stage: Clustering and Standardization of Online Political Participation

With the rapid rise of social media also came rapid development in government microblogs, which became catalysts for online political participation. Government microblogs made it easier and faster for internet users to make appeals to government, made interaction with government entities more frequent, made government information more open, made administrative procedures more transparent, and made institutions for online political participation more mature.

Beginning in the second half of 2010, government organs and officials began their entry into microblogs, a trend that peaked in 2011. Statistics from the State Internet Information Office (SIIO) indicate that as of September 2012, there were over 80,000 verified government microblog accounts in China.5 Microblogging platforms are now important platforms for interaction between officials and the public, and “microblog political participation” is now the biggest point of attention in online political participation. In mid-October 2011, the SIIO convened a “conference for exchanging experiences of actively using microbloggers to serve society,” encouraging party and government organs and leaders to use microblogs more openly and self-confidently. Data from people.cn’s Public Sentiment Monitoring Office indicate that: microblogs of government organs and officials in China have achieved an initial scale; there has been rapid growth in government microblogs belonging to functional departments other than public security microblogs; and that the structure and regional distribution of government microblogs are becoming more reasonable. While maintaining rapid growth in their numbers of users, government microblogs have also started becoming mature in such areas as mass concepts, media attainments, timeliness, transparency, rationality, constructiveness, organization protections, institutional construction, management standards, responses to public sentiment, the ideology of crisis management, and so on.6

In 2012, several local government departments came together to establish a microblogging announcement hall (see Table 2), which promoted clustered development of government microblogs and caused hitherto isolated government microblogs to achieve more cooperation, mutual supervision, and mutual acceleration. Typical examples of clustered microblogs are the “Beijing Microblog Announcement Hall,” anchored by “Beijing Announcements” and the “Shanghai Microblog Announcement Hall” led by “Shanghai Announcements.” Clustering is becoming a major trend in the development of microblogs. Initial achievements have been made by microblog clustering in areas such as responding to internet user questions and actively establishing topics of discussion to guide public discourse. Government microblogs are also beginning to play an important role in responding to sudden incidents. For example, Chen Shiqu, director of the Ministry of Public Security’s Anti-Child-Kidnapping Office, uses his government microblog to effectively support the recovery of kidnapped children. In another example, Wang Hui, director of the Beijing Municipal News Office, actively used his government microblog to drive communication between the government and the public during the “7-21 floods” incident, garnering widespread praise from the public.Table 2Level of attention paid to hot topics on party and government microblogs in 2012a

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