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Social media provide its users with a space to engage in public discussions, but researchers' opinions on how social media shapes the public sphere vary. It is debatable whether speech censorship on social media influences the development of an online public sphere.

Zhihu is a Q&A social media site in China, with hundreds of millions of users registered. The richness of topics on the platform and the active discussions among users may enable Zhihu to develop multiple online public spheres. However, online public spheres on Zhihu have been under-researched. Therefore, this thesis relies on the theoretical results of Rauchfleisch and Schäfer (2015) to carry out a study on the types and characteristics of the online public sphere of Zhihu.

This thesis uses Houyi collector, a data acquisition tool to select the top 10 most discussed questions on the Zhihu daily Hot List from March 1st to March 31st, 2022, with a total of 310 questions. This thesis categorizes topics according to their general qualities. The content of topics was then analyzed to evaluate the specific online public spheres on the Zhihu platform. This thesis finds that there are four types of online public spheres on Zhihu: thematic public sphere, short-term public sphere, non-domestic political public sphere, and domestic political public sphere. 

In addition, this thesis collects 38 Zhihu questions with the keyword "COVID-19 vaccine booster" and 171 user answers to one of the most discussed questions. This thesis explores the discourse and sentiment characteristics of the thematic public sphere by analyzing the Q&A posts around the topic of COVID-19 vaccine booster. First, users are willing to use the Zhihu platform for relevant information confirmation. Second, user answers are relatively long and cover various presentations of information, such as videos and pictures. Third, there were fewer professional and verified people involved in the discussions. Public sentiment is generally positive. However, many users have expressed their dissatisfaction with the epidemic prevention measures and their doubts about the effectiveness of the booster vaccines.

This thesis contributes to the scholarships of online public sphere by validating the potential public spheres in social media platforms. This thesis responds to the findings of Rauchfleisch and Schäfer (2015) by looking at the Zhihu platform.