How to treat online public opinion rationally, especially how to locate the relationship between online public opinion and judicial independence reasonably, is an unavoidable problem at present.
It should be said that network events are caused by "coordination". The author believes that the lack of power trust and the collective unconsciousness of network groups are the main reasons for the formation of network events.
First of all, people lack trust in public power. Generally speaking, people's trust in public power stems from their long-term life experience and is the result of their own experience in the past history. With the increasing social contradictions in the transitional period, the misconduct of power organs or officials is constantly exposed, and many people have accumulated distrust of some administrative organs, judicial organs and other public power departments through their own feelings or indirect ways. In order to question the public power, netizens use the Internet to publish and spread the flaws of the public power in the event on a large scale (or there are no flaws, but the system itself is unreasonable), so as to create public opinion and vent their dissatisfaction, and finally form an online group event.
Secondly, the failure of public power supervision. Power leads to corruption; In order to prevent corruption, power must be restricted by power. In our country, the ways to supervise power by power include supervision by the National People's Congress, administrative supervision, judicial supervision and inner-party supervision. Undoubtedly, this supervision system has played an important role in regulating power. However, it must be admitted that some supervision has not played its due role in preventing power deviance. With the rapid development of the Internet and the awakening of people's awareness of rights, people began to use the Internet to speculate what had happened and expand their influence, forming a huge wave of online public opinion, trying to supervise public power with public opinion, and finally achieving the effect of supervising power with power. Practice has proved that in some cases, such as Zhou Zhenglong's case of killing tigers, Xu Ting's case of stealing ATM machines and Deng Yujiao's case, online public opinion has achieved its original intention to varying degrees.
The supervision of power, in addition to the supervision from within the power system, is also indispensable. Public opinion supervision, especially the supervision of traditional media such as newspapers, radio and television, should be the main force to supervise the grandfather's power in the power system. Compared with the Internet, traditional media has its own weaknesses in the speed and breadth of information dissemination. For example, newspaper news reports have to go through interviews, writing, editing, publishing and other procedures, and its limited space determines the limited amount of information it carries. Television broadcasting also has the above characteristics. Compared with traditional media, the network has the characteristics of fast information transmission, wide audience and large amount of information. With the rapid development of the Internet, the Internet has become a channel for netizens to freely and publicly publish information and express their opinions, and netizens can directly participate in the process of information production and dissemination.
Thirdly, collective unconsciousness is also the main reason for the formation of network group events. Social psychologists found through research that "in collective psychology, individual intelligence is weakened, their personality is weakened, heterogeneity is swallowed up by homogeneity, and unconscious quality prevails." This kind of "unconsciousness" is often manifested as impulsiveness, suggestion, credulity and lack of rational thinking. It is hidden in the hearts of network group members, and once there is suitable soil, it will come out to affect their emotions and attitudes. Relying on the internet, people express various views and opinions. When an attractive and instructive speech appears in an activity, someone will agree with it. With the increase of the number of people concerned, psychological hints among groups are constantly strengthened, and infected people often lack independent thinking and calm judgment, but only public opinion with basically the same goal.
Public opinion and judicature are the relationship between supervision and supervision, and public opinion supervision of judicature is the embodiment of public opinion supervision. Modern democratic countries all recognize that supervision by public opinion is the basic right of the people. Our law also attaches great importance to the important role of public opinion supervision. Paragraph 1 of Article 27 of the Constitution stipulates: "All state organs and state functionaries must listen to the opinions and suggestions of the people and accept their supervision"; Article 4 1 further stipulates that "the people and citizens of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or state functionary." The report of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China also emphasized that to ensure the correct exercise of power, it is necessary to let power run in the sun and protect people's right to know, participate, express and supervise according to law.
Justice is the cornerstone of modern rule of law. There are inherent laws in the operation of judicial activities, including that the referee should be in direct contact with the parties and evidence, the prosecution and the defense should have equal opportunities to give evidence and cross-examine, and the judgment results can only come from admissible evidence, which determines that judicial activities should not be interfered by the outside world, otherwise the judgment process and the results produced by the process will lose their legitimacy. Article 126 of China's Constitution also stipulates: "The people's courts independently exercise judicial power in accordance with the law and are not subject to interference by administrative organs, social organizations and individuals." It can be said that in all state organs, the distance between justice and democracy is the most worthy of consideration.
Undeniably, there is a conflict between public opinion supervision and the nature of judicial activities. Public opinion supervision appeals to citizens' emotions and common sense, which has a strong moral color. In addition, the general public is not in direct contact with the parties and evidence, and the judgment of something is often unilaterally based on the information or materials provided by others. After influential cases or events were exposed, some posts (including comments and even offensive language) were reprinted repeatedly in public spaces where netizens were active, such as forums, communities and blogs, or spread through instant chat, e-mail, etc., which quickly formed public opinion. With the large-scale spread of information on the Internet, it eventually evolved into network group events, such as Liu Yongan, Huang Jing, Qiu Xinghua, Zhou Zhenglong, Xu Ting, Xishui whoring case, Deng Yujiao case and so on. These online mass incidents all contain tendentious guidance and comments without trial, which may easily cause judges to succumb to the pressure of public opinion, and even cause leaders to intervene in cases beyond the law, thus affecting the due independence of the judiciary.
Of course, this does not mean that online public opinion is incompatible with judicial activities, and that the judiciary is not affected by the outside world does not mean that the judiciary can not accept the supervision of public opinion. Sunlight is the best preservative. Open trial is one of the basic principles of judicial activities in China. It requires that the trial process and results be made public to the parties and the public, and its purpose is to accept public supervision. Public opinion can expose the unfair behavior in the judicial process in time and promote judicial justice. Especially at present, the corruption in China's judicial field can not be ignored as in other fields, which determines that judicial activities also need to be supervised by public opinion. In addition, in some cases, public opinion can also make the judiciary get rid of the illegal interference of other external forces in judicial activities, and finally realize judicial justice.
Internet public opinion has deepened people's distrust of power and weakened the credibility of power to some extent; However, on the other hand, it creates opportunities for public power to talk to the people and for public power to reflect on itself. Undeniably, many online mass incidents stem from the anomie of public power. In this regard, public power should reflect more on the legitimacy and rationality of its own behavior. For example, the online group's distrust of the people in the case of Deng Yujiao stems from the untimely disclosure of police information. To solve this puzzle, it is necessary to ensure the legitimacy and rationality of the exercise of public power from the system. In addition, public power should take online public opinion as an important part of people's demands, take it seriously, respond in time, change passivity into initiative, conduct rational dialogue between public power and people, strengthen mutual understanding between public power and people, and reconstruct the trust relationship between public power and people at a new height.
Specific to judicial activities, online mass incidents formed by online public opinion have interfered with judicial activities to some extent, and even affected social stability. However, in essence, most online mass incidents are the condensation and outbreak of social public opinion on a social problem. Therefore, in addition to imposing sanctions on the parties identified as malicious rumors, we should also be tolerant of public opinion and online mass incidents. On the one hand, judicial activities should be open and fair, on the other hand, they should be supervised by the public, and public opinion should be channeled rather than blocked. Simply avoiding them will only make gossip and social rumors occupy the main channel of information dissemination. We should be more tolerant of public opinion and network events, and let the people participate in judicial supervision in a more active way, which is conducive to promoting the substantive solution of the problem.