Challenges and Countermeasures of E-Political Communication

Along with the rapid development of information communications and the internet technology, mankind has entered the internet era. As for civil society, network media means the new carriers and new channels of citizen participation; it also means a new kind of democratic manner. While for governments, such network media means innovation of their governance model. However, the communication between e-government and civil society in network era is faced with a formidable array of challenges, mainly as follows: First, the network advocates liberalism, while it denies any authority beyond the constraints of time, with anonymity and virtual characteristics. Under current circumstance, in which the network legislation is comparatively lagging behind and on-line identity authentication technology is inadequate and imperfect, it can easily lead to the spread of the disorder in citizen network participation. Second, the e-government may conduct covert network political control over civil society through the "information bombardment", "false information", "information supervision" and other ways; the powers of the internet era are clearly shifted to the hands of technocrats, thus this may lead to the so-called "technocrats serving the citizens" so that the substantive democracy of civil society might be impaired. Third, blind repeated construction of the government website, enforcement of "Government Online Project", and imperfect public information infrastructure, all set up many obstacles for the communication. Fourth, the "digital divide" has led to the fact that political communication cannot represent the interests of the public; the governments can hardly make an appropriate decision in line with public opinion. Fifth, government sectors, civil servants, and citizens are lack of awareness and ability in terms of network information. In response to these problems, the government should actively build up open government and the legal protection system; establish the protec- - tion mechanism ensuring network political and orderly participation among civil citizen, conduct "network real-name system", protect the lawful rights and interests of citizen participation (including the network participation) through the establishment of "Citizen Participation Law"; in addition, the government should take measures towards the elimination of the "digital divide", foster "e-citizens" and promote the awareness and ability of network information among government sectors, civil servants, and citizens.