| Summary: | 碩士 === 世新大學 === 口語傳播學研究所 === 101 === All mainstream media attract attentions to their potentials, if along with pitfalls, for facilitating public debates on topical issues. The Internet is no exception. Due to its decentered nature with all its wide appeal, far reach, easy access and anonymous use, those who have something to say on anything, especially topics of the day, would in fact find various web-based forums welcome their participation. If none, starting a website from the scratch and entirely dedicated to whatever causes they happen to stand for is always possible, as the entry level is practically low.
Yet quality concerns have been high on the agenda of social scientists, and communication researchers among them. Given all its democratic potentials, the internet nonetheless keeps on haunting academics with this question: Exactly how to make the Internet closer to truly facilitating public debate, getting sizable publics into shape for topics of public concerns, so as to contribute to making democracy functioning.
Sharing similar concerns, this study focuses on those web-based public forums where hot debates have been going on, day-in and day-out, on topics initiated by ordinary internet users themselves. As whether or not to abolish death penalty has been heatedly debated in recent years, the author consciously chooses this controversy as a representative case and necessarily narrows down the scope by selecting Knowledge+ Yahoo-Kimo as the target of the empirical research. A total of 190 utterances are collected and categorized according to the principles of speech act theory, on which the study based methodologically, if supplemented and strengthened theoretically by the perspectives of “electronic symbolic actions”.
It is found that in general, public debates on issues such as whether or not to abolish death penalty tend to be free and chaotic, mixed with hot air and delightful lights, amidst uses and abuses of the characteristics of the forum as a designed interface. While hard-core stereotypical attitudes remain strong and reluctance to dialogue seems obvious, various nuances of sincerity have nonetheless been attempted, thus atmospheres created for further dialogues, and mutual understanding more or less promoted.
To conclude, the study suggests that, the quality of web-based public debate is an issue not just technological, but also related with its social use. While web-based public forums could improve to avoid abuses while encouraging sincere debates, internet users need be reminded to beware of the roles and actions they are taking as mutually interdependent symbolic actors on public forums.
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