How to understand the role of the media in the process of political democratization

I. The Role of the News Media in Participating in Modern Political Democracy

"Full citizenship relies on five basic cultural rights: access to the relevant to make personal decisions and political choices; access to the main intellectual frameworks that will be consolidated into clear and coherent explanations of the world; access to criticism of competing explanations and policies; access to representations that fully and fairly reflect the lives and aspirations of all communities; and access to intervene in the public *** culture as participants and spectators. representations that fully and fairly reflect the lives and aspirations of all communities; and the opportunity to engage with public **** culture as participants and spectators." These fundamental cultural rights of citizens are closely linked to the communicative activities of the media.

Specifically, the role of the media in participating in modern political democracy is manifested in the following: the media can serve as a tool for public participation in decision-making, as a tool for public participation in the evaluation of decisions and their consequences, in the discussion of public **** affairs, as a tool for focusing the public's attention on the formation of public opinion around the major issues, and as a tool for public opinion supervision of power. The media is a professional organization of publication. The wide circulation of politics is an important prerequisite for the realization of democracy. The political participation of citizens and citizens' organizations is an important symbol of political democracy. And the behavior of political participation, whether it is to participate in political decision-making, participation in the political decision-making and its consequences of the comments, participation in the public **** affairs of the comments, or participation in social and political activities, campaigns, need to access to politics, understanding of the political situation as a prerequisite. Politics is an important part of the content of the news media. The news media is the main vehicle for communicating politics in modern society. Communicating politics through the release of political news and reporting on political discussions is one of the ways in which the media plays a role in political participation.

Focusing public attention and influencing the formation of public opinion is another way in which the media play a role in political participation. As early as the end of the 19th century, the French jurist and social psychologist Tarde, in an article entitled "Talk", studied the interconnection between the state, government, parliament, voluntary groups, places of conversation, public *** public opinion, and social action and other elements of participatory democracy, with special emphasis on the media and public opinion. A century later, Western scholars began to study Tarde's ideas and summarize his model of public opinion and mass media. Katz, a famous American communication scholar, pointed out that Tarde's model "focuses on the relationship between news reports, conversations, opinions and actions, arguing that news reports provide topics for the countless conversations that take place every day in bars and restaurants, coffeehouses and salons. ...... Tarde suggests that talk in this sense is a modern phenomenon, i.e., talk that follows the principles of openness and equality of process, and is itself a cultivator of equality. Thanks to journalism, the topics of conversation are not only nationally uniform, but change by leaps and bounds." For Tarde, the political function of conversation is to "percolate"/"filter" ideas, i.e., to continually refine one's views to make them appear more "thoughtful" and to unconsciously form one or two opinions around a particular topic. This means that the individual's views are constantly refined to appear more 'considered' and, without realizing it, one or two national views are formed around a particular topic, and these considered views are then reported in the newspapers once again and become the benchmarks for individual behavior. This, according to Tarde, is the primary means by which political or economic choices are made in modern society. Katz, in summarizing Tarde's model, states that it "not only links the system of news coverage, talk, opinion, and action, but it points out the way in which each element of the 'linear sequence' drives the next, and it links this relationship by emphasizing that it is embedded in the independent coverage of the news, a particular event, and the social control embedded in the feedback that conveys public opinion." It can be seen that Tarde was already concerned with the role of the press in focusing public discourse on a certain unifying topic, as well as the role of the press as an intermediary link in the process of the "public will" from converging in a large number of such discourses to becoming the benchmark for individual behavior. He points out the influence of the media on citizens' political choices, an important part of modern democratic politics, through its role in focusing public attention and shaping public opinion. His focus and viewpoints are similar to the research focus of the media's "issue-setting role" theory put forward by the famous American communication scholars Donald Shaw and McCombs in the 1970s, and to the "secondary communication"/"communication" theory put forward by the American communication pioneer Lazarsfeld in the 1940s. There are also similarities with the "secondary communication"/"two-step process of communication" theory of Lazarsfeld, a pioneer of American communication in the 1940s, which points out the interaction between mass communication and interpersonal communication. The results of these scholars and others who have conducted similar research show that the news media can serve democratic politics by acting as a tool for focusing public attention and by combining with interpersonal and group communication in shaping public opinion and becoming a benchmark for individual behavior.

The news media also serve democracy through the influence of public opinion on governmental decision-making and the role of public opinion as a check on power as a result of the link between their communication activities and public opinion. The media provide a modern tool for the uploading of public opinion. Members of the public and public organizations can make their voices heard publicly through the media around their own interests, thus influencing public opinion and enabling the government to take into account the voices of all parties in the decision-making process. This is also a manifestation of democracy. In addition, the modern media report on the actions of ruling institutions and officials, so that the public is aware of these situations, which is an important condition for the former to accept public opinion supervision. And the modern media, as a public-oriented communication medium, can become the public and pass the public's opinions on the supervision of ruling institutions and officials to the latter. Public opinion supervision with the media as the intermediary is one of the important ways of restraining power in modern democratic politics. In the history of Western news dissemination, the media's reports during the U.S. war with Vietnam had an obvious impact on the rise of the anti-war wave within the U.S. The latter was instrumental in prompting the U.S. government to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam during Nixon's administration and end the war; the Washington Post and other pioneers in the U.S. Watergate political scandals exposed the attack on Nixon's downfall as a trigger. In our country, in recent years, in the process of anti-corruption, the media has played an important role in public opinion supervision.

The famous British sociologist Giddens pointed out that in the society, "the only way to establish authority is through democracy". In today's society, citizens' political participation reflects the principle that power belongs to the people, and is the inevitable requirement and inevitable manifestation of democratic politics, as well as the inevitable way to make political power enjoy authority among the public. Therefore, by acting as a tool for political participation, the media can also serve to enhance the public's sense of identification with and conscious obedience to political authority, consolidate the legitimacy base of the political system, and promote political stability. In addition, by providing a platform and public **** for public political participation, the media can also serve to strengthen citizens' democratic consciousness and enhance their self-consciousness in participating in democratic politics, thus promoting the process of modern political civilization with democratic politics at its core.

Of course, the tool itself cannot ensure the proper use of the tool. The modern media industry can certainly serve as a service tool in the process of democratic politics, playing a role in helping the public's political participation, political expression, the cultivation of democratic consciousness, the formation of public opinion, and the monitoring of public opinion on power, but this does not mean that the media industry will naturally produce positive effects in these aspects and naturally bring about the gospel. How well the media industry serves as a tool in the process of democratic politics depends critically on how human societies navigate this tool.

II.Network Media's Participation in Socio-Political Life

The rise of the Internet, the world's computerized interconnected network, is one of the most remarkable developments in human society in the 20th century. since the 1990s, the Internet has come into thousands of homes all over the world, with e-mail exchanges, e-commerce, e-government, on-line news dissemination, online games and entertainment, and on-line education, BBS electronic bulletin boards, Internet-based telemedicine, etc., has been rapidly developed, and the social impact of the network has gradually penetrated into all aspects of human social life. In terms of the penetration of the Internet into socio-political life, the rise and development of e-government most prominently reflects this penetration. However, given that e-government is mainly realized through the establishment of government websites to provide services on the Internet, it is not the subject of this paper. What is discussed here are the main ways in which online news media participate in socio-political life: current/political news, electronic, online polls, and so on. Through these forms, the online news media are contributing to socio-political communication and public political participation, thus serving the current process of accelerated political democratization.

First of all, online media constitute a new channel of political communication, and thus are linked to new developments in political communication. In modern society, news media is the main channel of political communication. People learn about all kinds of politics mainly through the news media. Knowledge and awareness of all kinds of politics are the prerequisites for the public to form their own political attitudes and adopt political behaviors, and for the public to participate in politics. And the emphasis on public political participation is an important manifestation of the progress of political civilization in modern society. With the rise of Internet journalism, it has rightly become a new channel for communicating politics. Both media websites and commercial websites involved in news dissemination include politics/current affairs news and other political aspects in their daily communication content. Some of these websites have "political/current affairs" channels/boards in their channel/board names, while some websites have different naming methods for their news channels/boards and do not have such a board name, but their "Highlights", " Scroll", "domestic", "international" and other channels/boards are mainly political. For example, there is the "Current Affairs" section, which specializes in current affairs and politics, and the "International" section, which communicates international current affairs and politics. While the name of the channel/board on the website does not include the words "current affairs"/"politics", the website provides information on international current affairs and politics through the channels/boards "Rolling News", "China", "International", "China", and "China". However, the website also provides a large amount of politics through channels such as "Scrolling News", "China" and "International". Compared with previous media channels, online media as a new channel for communicating politics is particularly advantageous in communicating sudden political events due to its instantaneous communication characteristics, which enable it to adopt a "rolling" style of releasing reports on highly dynamic current political news, and as a result, the visit rate of some famous media websites tends to increase significantly when major and sudden political events occur.

In addition to the above, the website of some famous media tends to have a significant increase in the number of visitors in the event of a major, sudden political event or even the phenomenon of online "traffic jam".

In addition, the number of networks linked to the endless virtual space on the Internet, the number of people who have access to the Internet, the number of people who have access to the Internet, the number of people who have access to the Internet. An example of this point can be seen in the fact that some time ago the American public relied on European news sites to get a broader and more multifaceted picture of the U.S.-Iranian conflict. Roots. Apparently, when it comes to the recent international situation, the American public is not satisfied with just getting reports from the American standpoint, perspective, etc.; they surf to the websites of the European country of the UK in order to seek relevant reports on the various different perspectives on the international situation.

It is worth noting that the outward-looking character of political communication in online media means both new opportunities and new challenges in international political communication for developing countries. On the one hand, the network media with this feature provides an opportunity for these countries to make their voices heard louder than ever in international politics. On the other hand, under the reality of serious imbalance in international communication caused by differences in power and imbalance in the state of development of the Internet and online media, developed Western countries such as the United States are more capable of utilizing the online media and have more initiative, and by virtue of their superiority in the development of the Internet and online media, it is easier for the politics produced by their online media and reflecting their positions and choice of perspectives to be circulated and have an impact on a global scale, which This poses new challenges for developing countries. However, it is impossible for developing countries, where the globalization and networking of communication has become a major trend, to avoid this challenge, nor is it possible to avoid the unprecedented richness of the sources constituted by the online media, nor is it realistic to keep out of the sight of the citizens of developing countries the politics provided by the online media of the United States and other developed countries of the West, which reflect the positions and perspectives of choice of the West. Therefore, there is an urgent need for developing countries to take advantage of the situation, strengthen their own online media and emphasize their function of external communication, and make good use of the online news media to release politics reflecting their positions and perspectives to the world in the form of expressions that the public is accustomed to internationally. At the same time, the citizens of developing countries, in a pluralistic environment, have a broader political vision, receive a variety of channels, and have a higher demand for the quality of politics, and this reality also requires that the online media in these countries improve their political production in terms of both content and form. In relation to China's online media practice, judging from China's central-level key media websites and more important regional comprehensive news websites, China attaches great importance to the online media's external communication function. Among the central-level key media websites, the China Daily website, the International Online website and the China.com website directly use foreign languages as the main language of communication, and offer a variety of foreign language versions, as well as traditional Chinese. Most of the more important regional general news websites also have English versions. This is an important step in using online media to strengthen external communication. But in order to make our country's media website dissemination of politics to attract a large number of foreign netizens eyeballs and then in the international community to produce a wide range of impact, this step alone is still not enough, but also need to build on this foundation to take a step forward, and strive to foreign audiences accustomed to the form of expression and their interests, etc., to improve our political production, so that it is really in the international community to produce the effect that we expect. At the same time, we should also pay attention to the reality that the public's demand for political communication is increasing in the era of networking, and strive to make the public use our online media as the preferred channel for online political communication through their excellent work.

Secondly, the online media provide a new channel for the public to participate in politics and exercise their political rights with interactive and convenient features, which is closely connected with the new development of citizens' participation in politics. One of the basic features of modern political civilization is that the people are the main body of power. In the West, the idea of "people's sovereignty"/"sovereignty resides in the people" laid the theoretical foundation for the establishment of the modern democratic political system in the West. In China, people's sovereignty is the essence of our socialist political civilization. Respect for the political rights of the people is the cornerstone of our political system. The people's expression of their views on major international and domestic events, the people's comments and suggestions on government work, and their participation in politics are important manifestations of the people's exercise of their political rights. The emergence of the Internet media has provided a new channel, characterized by interaction and convenience, for the people to exercise these rights. It is a common phenomenon worldwide for news websites to set up electronic and opinion polling columns. In China, relying on the traditional news media group of media websites is directly integrated into the domestic news dissemination management system, media websites rightly attach great importance to keep in line with the work priorities of the party and the government. In the current situation where our government attaches great importance to governing for the people, to the political participation of the people, and to their comments on the work of the government, media websites in China also attach great importance to utilizing their advantages to provide the people with a series of new ways of exercising their right to political participation - electronic, online government work comment columns, online public opinion tests, etc.

Regularly launching simple online opinion polls/surveys on certain hot issues is also a common practice among media websites in China. Although it is difficult to draw samples according to scientific mathematical and statistical principles, and thus it is difficult to compare the representativeness of this kind of online opinion poll/survey with that of public opinion surveys which draw samples from the public in strict accordance with scientific sampling procedures, this kind of practice, after all, also provides a concise way for netizens to express their own opinions, and the collected data always has a certain value of reference.

This part of the paper examines the positive impact of online media intervention in social and political life. Of course, not all that the new online medium has brought to the process of modern political civilization has been a boon. It also brings challenges to traditional politics. First, the widespread use of network technology has led to a weakening of the role of gatekeepers in social communication, and practices such as the ability of individual users to post on their own electronically have brought about a high degree of difficulty in controlling content, which in turn has brought about new challenges to political control. The necessary political control is necessary for the effective functioning of the political system, and even more so for developing/post-developing countries, which are "inextricably linked to the latter's "reactive position, where they must find the right balance between citizen competition, radicalization, and national strength, and where they can neither move forward nor stand still". "

In addition, from the perspective of international politics, due to the global character of the network, the involvement of the new network media in political life is bound to expand the mutual agitation between different political systems, political concepts, and ways of political behavior in different countries, thus bringing to the vast number of developing countries, which are in a weaker position, the new challenge of how to safeguard their own political independence and maintain their own political order. It can be said that the participation of the new Internet media in social and political life brings a double challenge to political control for developing countries. However, it must be recognized that the participation of the new Internet media in social and political life has become a general trend. In the face of its challenges to political control, we cannot take the attitude of stopping the use of the Internet as a way of choking, but we should take advantage of the situation and reorganize the way of political control through communication.

III. The Interaction between Network Media and Traditional News Media in Participating in Political Democracy

Roger Fiedler, a famous American expert in the study of new media, regarded "connecting to the past" as one of the most important factors for the success of the new media in entering into the application of the society in the "Changing Forms of the Media," and regarded the leap of "familiarity" as one of the key factors for the success of the new media in entering into the application of the society. In Changing Media Forms, Roger Fiedler, a famous American expert in new media research, regards "connecting to the past" as one of the important factors for the successful application of new media into society, and regards the bridge of "familiarity" as the necessary process of new media development. He points out that "in the history of human communication systems, new forms have rarely been adopted without a close connection to earlier or existing forms". ...... Modern forms of communication media show a similar pattern. For example, photographic art was readily adopted because it was based on familiar ways of viewing and presenting sights. ...... At first, photogrammetry was seen as a more efficient and reliable means of producing portraits and landscape art, and once the familiar bridges had been crossed, more creative uses were required." In his view, "Successful forms of new media, like new species, don't just pop up out of nowhere. They are inextricably linked to the past." The connection between the old and the new, the interaction between the old and the new may perhaps be described as a fundamental feature in the development of the field of communication. Many facts in the history of the development of communication in the world can prove this point. The connection between printing and writing, the connection between the style of early printed newspapers and the style of hand-copied news letters and news books, and the connection between film and television and video, sound recording and text-to-speech, etc., all demonstrate the connection between the old and the new in the process of the evolution of the system and form of communication. The development of the Internet and online journalism is no exception. Specifically to the network media penetration into the social and political life of the traditional media in this connection, interaction, the author believes that this link can be categorized as communication and political aspects of the link interaction, focusing on the public's attention, to influence the formation of public opinion in the link interaction and act as an intermediary for public opinion monitoring link interaction.

As far as the communicative-political aspect of the linkage interaction is concerned, it is clear that the online media have learned a great deal from the experience of the traditional media in terms of the organization of the political columns and the judgment of news value. The common patterns of political content in old and new media are roughly the same. Our media websites often carry current political reports and commentaries from traditional media. At the same time, the online media, with its own set of advantages, including instantaneous delivery, global circulation, and carrying a huge volume, may be the first publisher in the event of major emergencies, and become the best channel for integrating information through hypertext links and other ways of relevantly combining them into a topic at the time of a major news event, thus providing a source of reference to the traditional media's, material. In addition, the network media to disseminate some forms of expression of politics, has also begun to have an impact on the traditional media.

In terms of focusing the public's attention and influencing the formation of public opinion in the linkage interaction, domestic and foreign academics have noted that, because the network through the electronic and so on provides netizens to discuss a variety of issues in the public **** space, because of the network media can quickly pool around a particular topic related reports, the network of this emerging medium is beginning to play in the issue setting process together with the traditional media, to influence the role of public agenda. The role of the Internet as an emerging medium is beginning to influence the public agenda along with traditional media in the process of issue setting. At present, its more obvious performance is: netizens quickly discuss or repost traditional media news reports in the electronic, the relevant boards of the network media quickly gathered related reports; network media through hypertext links and other aggregation of the intensity caused by the online electronic discussion of a variety of opinions in the rapid aggregation and active exchanges, not only with the traditional media to interact with the follow-up reports, but also accelerate the initial traditional media coverage of the It also accelerates the process by which events/issues/phenomena initially reported by the traditional media become hot topics of concern to the whole society. In other words, these online communication activities shorten the time gap between the media agenda and the public agenda. For example, in the case of the "Luoyang Fire", the rapid and massive electronic exchanges among netizens around the topic, and the aggregation of related reports by the online media, all played a role in how quickly the event became a hot topic of public concern, and thus a part of the issue setting process. Of course, because of the Internet's characteristic of bringing together people from all directions, the possibility is open that the first topic to appear online will attract the attention of the traditional media, be reported, and then become an issue for the public, which, if it happens, will be another kind of sequence diagram of the interaction between the old and the new media in this regard. However, due to the existence of problems such as mudslinging in online communication and the tendency for discussion in the electronic to become emotional, the interaction between old and new media in terms of serious political issue setting generally manifests itself in the former situation.

Reacting as an intermediary for public opinion monitoring, online media has become a new force in the expression of public opinion and public opinion monitoring by acting as a new channel for the public to participate in politics with the characteristics of interaction and convenience, the last part of this article talked about the strong state, and the "net discussion of the government" and other columns. In the previous part of this paper, we discussed the role of online media in reflecting public opinion and implementing public opinion supervision. In the process of online media's involvement in public participation in politics and supervision of public opinion, online and offline interactions are generated between them and traditional media, and the relevant communication activities on the Internet are often echoed by those of the traditional media, resulting in a mutually reinforcing effect. For example, in the case of public opinion activities surrounding certain judicial reports, for example, there has been a convergence on the Internet as well as enthusiastic discussions among netizens, which in turn has further strengthened the traditional media's attention to this issue. With the gradual maturation of online media, online media have been absorbing the traditional media's practice of serving the communication between the government and the people and reflecting public opinion, and have set up some innovative online columns/sections to serve the same function. Researchers have already noted that in recent years, "hotline service boards" have gradually emerged in China's media websites, which are designed to play the role of communicating between the government and the people, and realizing the function of communicating with the people from the top to the bottom, and are characterized by the online interaction between the government, the media, and the audience. Typical examples of such "hotline service boards" are "People's Hotline", "Oriental Express", "Citizen's Message Board" of Qianlong News Network, etc. "and so on. These boards are set up by traditional news organizations, which are the parent organizations of media websites, and their rise is a reflection of the interconnection between online media and traditional media. And the operation of these boards, there are often network and traditional media interaction.

Internet new media and traditional mass media **** together to participate in political democracy is becoming a new phenomenon in the era of social and political life. The two sides have interacted with each other in a series of ways in the ****together participation in social and political life. How to make the two interact in the socio-political life in a way that is conducive to each other's strengths and weaknesses, and to play their role in promoting political democracy and guiding public opinion correctly and effectively, constitutes a new research topic full of practical significance.