Keywords: New sources of information on public opinion and the use of social media to voice public opinion

The pursuing aims of online mobilization by people in China are totally different with that in developed countries. Chinese people do care about political issues and social justice, but their aims of online mobilization are apolitical and less social issues related to politics. For example, there barely has online mobilization for human rights or changing some senior leaders. They mostly claim specific interest or specific issues that have no relation to sensitive politics. In the special political context of China, these aims are safe, and the participants will be risk-free.
The social media is the most vigorous and most popular media style in China today, such as Weibo and WeChat. People love to use it. Compared with other media, such as newspapers, magazines, TVs or radios, social media by the internet is more open and less censorship. With the development of the service quality of the mobile network and the market-penetration of the smartphone, online mobilization in China is more frequent and has stronger influence than ever.
According to my observation, I find that most of the mobilizations happened in social field, at the local level in their city or communities for their own interests. Some scholars name them as “social movement”, from the point of sociology. But, actually, for some reasons, such “social movement” in China don’t have all the typical characteristics of those in the western countries. Because apparent social movement can’t be developed in China. Cases in recent years showed the different aims of online mobilization. I divide them into three styles: individual interest, collective interest/community interest, and public interest. In this paper, I would like to study how the online mobilizations work for the collective interest/community interests.
In this paper, firstly, I would try to define the term “collective interest” or “community interest” in the context of mainland China.
Then, the case study method will be employed in this study, to make my findings and discussions more clearly and more visually. The case I choose happened in 2009, Panyu district, Guangzhou city, Guangdong province, about how the owners at those housing estates nearby allied to boycott the waste-to-energy plant program by online mobilization, and finally achieve success to some extent. This case is a typical online mobilization example for collective interest, in which, the social media plays a vital role in organizing owners widely, mobilizing social forces, arousing national discussions, and promoting comparatively satisfied settlements of the event. And this case has also been a classic case in the field of public policy-making. I will describe the case in detail in time order, identify main actors participating in this event, analysis their social status, their roles and effects, and the inter-activities and inter-effects among them.
Though this case, we will figure out: 1, reasons why this event could success, that means, what kind of conditions should be required; 2, what roles the internet play in this event, are they different in different