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In online discussion centered on public issues, the identity of the public intellectual (as an opinion leader) has entailed more significant social responsibility through their actions instead of merely making a difference to trends of discussions. Jacoby’s, Bourdieu’s and Posner’s understanding of public intellectuals, along with the social and cognitive function attached to the role, can be seen in the case of Cui. First of all, the active interaction taking place between Cui and his followers serves as a good example of the regression of public intellectuals (Jacoby, 1987). At the same time, Cui’s engagement with the public hints that the social responsibility of public intellectuals was not regressing but instead being reshaped (Posner, 2003). In other words, unlike the phenomenon described by Jacoby that forced public intellectuals to escape the stresses of living and struggling in the public realm, public intellectuals, such as Yongyuan Cui and Xiulin Gu, are actively mobilising in the public sphere and passionately engaging with ordinary Weibo users regarding GM controversy. In addition to the personal blogs mentioned in Jacoby’s updated work about public intellectuals (Jacoby, 2009), personal pages on social media have made full use of interactive functions to achieve effective two-way communication between public intellectuals and the lay public. In this way, the regression —has been realised.

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Conference, Cui is qualified to involve himself in political action by virtue of his fame and social influence (Bourdieu, 1991). Rather than escaping from the complicated issues of society and politics, and hiding in the “greenhouse” of university, Cui overstepped the boundary of his own specialised field and got involved in public debate centered on controversial issues—the commercialisation and the governance of GM (Jacoby, 1987; Cushman, 1999; Posner, 2003). Trying hard to make the public aware of the potential risk of GMO, Cui actively engaged with the general public through social media and physical activities, such as the physical debate between the Chinese journalist Yongyuan Cui and an unknown economics scholar from Fudan University (Raider Knight, 2015), as he speaks for the public in defense of their ‘right to know’ (Cushman, 1999). As can be seen from the data, Cui clearly declared his standpoint concerning the governance of GMO in understandable language. A style of communication that involves frequent interactation with the general public, discussing derivative topics, such as criticising the unreasonable attribution of responsibility. His performance on Weibo has nearly covered all the means at his disposal to act in a social responsible way through public intellectual work (Jacoby, 1987; Posner, 2003). The ‘public’ features of a public intellectual, understood as a close connection with the public through engagement exercises, has been fully accoumplished through his actions on social media.

In accordance with the data retrieved from spontaneous discussion on social media, and the qualitative method of data analysis, although unlikely to reveal statistical evidence indicating an association between the influence of public intellectuals and quality of public engagement, Jacoby’s concern about the online habit of ‘one-stop thinking and instant commenting’ (Jacoby, 2009: 40-41), which results in the decline of intellectuals influence in digital environment does not happen. On the contrary, public intellectuals’ efforts are widely spread on social media and contribute to the rising of the anti-GM movement.

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intellectuals. According to the Nabatchi and Leighninger’s analysis on the model of public engagement online, which is also identified as thin participation, this quickly- spread large-population-based participation model on social media is able, theoretically, to facilitate the large-scale expansion of public intellectuals’ or opinion leaders’ personal influence. Specifically, rather than being the creator of Twitter or Weibo content, the main way of expanding personal influence is by spreading opinions as widely as possible, for which a huge network connecting vast population of users become an indispensable condition. Regarding this, social media have provided an ideal platform, on which people whose opinions are steered by opinion leaders assemble spontaneously and compose an online community based on common standpoints such as pro-GM and anti-GM. The members of communities take part in normal activities carried out on social media as individuals, by which thin participation is carried out on social media; meaning that the opportunities and the content of participation are likely to rapidly spread through the existing social network.

In the process of engagement on social media, participants are continuously influenced by and, meanwhile, influence others, including opinion leaders, through all kinds of interactions (e.g., reply, discuss, retweet, like, follow, unfollow). As the influence of opinion leaders, public intellectuals in particular, and of the anti-GM movement widely spread out through the network, an increasing number of people with a wide spectrum of perspectives are likely to get involved, engaged, on social media. Here, the engagement of public intellectuals, who have existing authority and fame acquired from their own intellectual fields stamp the movement with political features, as they are able to interfere political issues through either deliberation or democratic consultation. In this way, engagement activity is continuously extending in scale and strengthened social impact, and the online anti-GM movement get a chance to achieve considerable political influence. Therefore, on the one hand it is reasonable to say that the anti-GM movement led by opinion leaders serves as a typical case of engagement behaviour on social media. On the other hand, a mutual improvement of ideas does exist due to the interaction between public intellectuals and the engagement activities taking place on

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social media. In other words, the present movement led by public intellectuals on social media is likely to be a new power facilitating socia media engagement which involves public intellectuals discussing with and convincing the public to share their viewpoints, and meanwhile offers a valuable resource of reference to the government to support anticipatory governance.