Online Participation Chaos: A Case Study of Chinese Government-Initiated E-Polity Square |
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| Authors: | Wei Zhang Xiaolin Xu Hui Zhang |
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| Affiliation: | 1. School of Public Administration, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China;2. Department of Political Science, Columbia University, New York, USA;3. School of Urban Culture, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China |
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| Abstract: | The research examines a government-initiated online engagement program in China, mainly including its history, mechanism, and how netizens participated in it. To clearly address the participation scenario, a framework is proposed to further explore the quality of participation. The result shows that participation chaos is prevalent with poor-quality proposals. A government censorship exists all the time and changes with the popularity of the forum. It also implies that the purpose of a Chinese government-initiated online engagement forum may be varied, one for engagement and the other for maintaining stability, which partly attributes to the online participation chaos. |
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| Keywords: | Content analysis governmental censorship government-initiated online engagement participation chaos |
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