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The Internet has developed rapidly in China since it entered China in the late 1980s.With the assistance of major online news portals,more and more Chinese people can join online discussions for public affairs.Past researches focus on the media propaganda conducted by the state,the potential of media digitalization to challenge the authoritarian rule in China,the government censorship to online information and the online public sphere development.However,very few scholars aim at answering whether online public opinion,represented by online news comments,has value for public policy reference in the domestic environmental disaster case.Which factors can influence the content and attitudes of the online news discussions?Are online news comments consistent and representative of the Chinese population?With a case study focusing on the online news discussion of the Tianjin Explosion Case,the research aims at answering these questions by conducting content analysis,online ethnography and applying GIS to online news discussion data.I argue that there is online space allowing questions and even critiques towards policy issues existing together with suspicious online propaganda.Chinese netizens interest of discussing public affairs shows timely inconsistent and geographically unbalanced.The online news comments platform is lack of rational and specific policy relevant discussions.But policy relevant comments tend to trigger resonation among Chinese netizens by attracting more "likes" than normal discussions.