Who is Setting Emotions? A Comparative Study on Emotion Diffusion in Social Media among Public, Government and Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuhuan Zhou ◽  
Yi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Time Point

BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 outbreak, social media served as the main platform for information exchange, through which the Chinese government, media and public would spread information. At the same time, a variety of emotions interweave, and the public emotions would also be affected by the government and media. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the types, trends and relationships of emotional diffusion in Chinese social media among the public, the government and the media under the pandemic of COVID-19 (December 30,2019, to July 1,2020) . METHODS In this paper, Python 3.7.0 and its data crawling framework Scrapy 1.5.1 are used to write a web crawler program to search for super topics related to COVID-19 on Sina Weibo platform of different keywords . Then, we used emotional lexicon to analyze the types and trends of the public, government and media emotions on social media. Finally cross-lagged regression was applied to build the relationships of different subjects’ emotions. RESULTS The highlights of our study are threefold: (1) The public, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic in China; (2) Emotional diffusion shows a certain change over time, and negative emotions are obvious in the initial phase of the pandemic, with the development of the pandemic, positive emotions surpass negative emotions and remain stable. (3)The impact among the three main emotions with the period as the time point is weak, while the impact of emotion with the day as the time point is relatively obvious. The emotions of the public and the government impact each other, and the media emotions can guide the public emotions. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study of comparing pubic, government and media emotions on the social media during COVID-19 pandemic in China. The pubic, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the pandemic. And the government and the media have better effect on short-term emotional guidance. Therefore, when the pandemic suddenly occurs, the government and the media should intervene in time to solve problems and conflicts and diffuse positive and neutral emotions. In this regard, the government and the media can play important roles through social media in the major outbreaks. At the theoretical level, this paper takes China's epidemic environment and social media as the background to provide one of the explanatory perspectives for the spread of emotions on social media. At the some time, because of this special background, it can provide comparison and reference for the research on internet emotions in other countries.

Public Opinion Analysis of COVID-19 Transmission in China Based on Weibo Texts (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xianlai Chen ◽  
Xiaoyu Zhao ◽  
Gongmian Zeng ◽  
Yang Rong ◽  
Xiang Chen
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Regional Analysis ◽  
Time Points ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Time Point

BACKGROUND Background: The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019 had a huge impact on the world, and netizens also showed great concern about the pandemic situation. OBJECTIVE Objective: To analyze the public opinion trend on the COVID-19 pandemic and netizens’ sentimental attitudes to help grasp the dynamics of public sentiment toward the event and provide a reference for the government and the media to steer public opinion. METHODS Methods: Four time points were selected during the pandemic according to the Weibo Index. Weibo content were grabbed by crawlers. A total of 510,493 Weibo texts were collected. Regional analysis, word frequency statistics and sentiment analysis were conducted based on the Weibo content. RESULTS Results: The pandemic aroused great concern of Internet user. Among the four time points selected, Beijing users had the highest attention(about 9.28%). Wordcloud showed that the words “pneumonia”, “novel coronavirus pneumonia”, “coronavirus”, “case” and “Wuhan” were the main concerns of Weibo users. At the first time point, about 47% of netizens showed negative emotions and it was higher than the percentage of positive emotions (about 35%). But at the time point 2, 3, 4, the netizens with positive emotions accounted for 41%, 51% and 47% respectively, which were significantly greater than those with negative emotions (30%, 26% and 29%). CONCLUSIONS Conclusions: The pandemic caused great concern among netizens with a higher level of concern in economically developed regions. In Weibo users’ posts, words related to COVID-19 and fighting the pandemic were used most frequently during the pandemic. In the early days of the outbreak, netizens were panicked by the outbreak. Over time, the mood of netizens gradually shifted toward confidence and hope.

How to Tell the Truth without Outraging the Press?

MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Li Xiguang
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Chinese News Media

The commercialization of meclia in China has cultivated a new journalism business model characterized with scandalization, sensationalization, exaggeration, oversimplification, highly opinionated news stories, one-sidedly reporting, fabrication and hate reporting, which have clone more harm than good to the public affairs. Today the Chinese journalists are more prey to the manipu/ation of the emotions of the audiences than being a faithful messenger for the public. Une/er such a media environment, in case of news events, particularly, during crisis, it is not the media being scared by the government. but the media itself is scaring the government into silence. The Chinese news media have grown so negative and so cynica/ that it has produced growing popular clistrust of the government and the government officials. Entering a freer but fearful commercially mediated society, the Chinese government is totally tmprepared in engaging the Chinese press effectively and has lost its ability for setting public agenda and shaping public opinions. 

Chinese Citizenry Social Media Pressures and Public Official Responses

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-181
Author(s):  
James Robert Masterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Access Information ◽  
The Government ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
High Level

Widespread use of social media in China is a double edged sword: social media offers opportunities for the government to connect with society, gauge the opinion of citizens in the public domain, and allow citizens to voice their anger when necessary by blowing off steam online rather than in the streets. However, social media also allows citizens to access information outside of China much more rapidly and efficiently and to link up and communicate with other citizens much more quickly. Social media allows users to share texts, photos, and files, making it much more difficult for the government to control information and to thwart organizing for political purposes. In some instances, the use of social media has forced the Chinese government to take actions that it otherwise would not have done or to reverse actions or policies already set in place. The goal of this chapter is to illustrate the double-edged sword that social media poses to government officials in China, particularly high-level party officials in Beijing.

Displays of emotion and citizen support for Merkel and Gysi

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar W. Gabriel ◽  
Lena Masch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Individual Recognition ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Support ◽  
The Public ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
The Impact

Emotional appeals have always been an important instrument in the mobilization of political support in modern societies. As found in several experimental studies from the United States, the emotions displayed by leading politicians in their televised public appearances have an impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of the public. Positive emotions such as joy or happiness, pride, and amusement elicit a more positive assessment of politicians, whereas showing negative emotions such as anger or outrage often diminishes the public’s support. This transfer of emotions from sender to recipient has been described as “emotional contagion.” However, under specific circumstances, emotions expressed by politicians can result in counter-empathic reactions among recipients. To examine the role of emotions between political leaders and the public in an institutional and cultural setting outside the United States, this article presents experimental findings on the impact of emotions expressed by two leading German politicians on the German public. The study used emotional displays by Chancellor Angela Merkel and former parliamentary leader of the Left Party, Gregor Gysi, observing how their assessments by the German public changed in response to these displays. Consistent with existing research, we discovered positive effects on the evaluation of both politicians when they displayed positive emotions. However, the impact of negative emotions is different for Merkel and Gysi and can be described as contagion in the former and counter-contagion in the latter case. Furthermore, we found that individual recognition of the expressed emotions modified the effect they had on the evaluation of some leadership characteristics.

scholarly journals Meningkatkan Kemampuan Berbahasa Melalui Media Sosial Instagram

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inayatu Solikhah
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Ease Of Access ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Impact

In this day and age many people use Indonesian language which is not in accordance with the rules of language and with the advancement of information technology which rapidly raises many social media, one of which is Instagram which is loved by almost all Indonesian people. The purpose of this study is to find out and explain how much influence instagram has in fostering the development of Indonesian. The method used is descriptive qualitative method with data collection techniques. The results of the study explained that Instagram social media was also used by the Ministry of Education and Culture to develop Indonesian language through accounts @badanbahasakemndikbud which upload many Indonesian rules and grammar, including spelling of words, equivalent words, raw words, punctuation, word terms, proverbs, and so on. Not only official accounts from the government, some communities also contribute to developing the Indonesian language through Instagram, one of which is @sastraindonesia with upload contents that together discuss Indonesian rules and grammar. The impact of the instagram as one of the media used in the development of Indonesian language is that more and more people know about Indonesian rules and grammar because of the ease of access by Instagram communities.

scholarly journals Chinese Public's Attention to the COVID-19 Epidemic on Social Media: Observational Descriptive Study

10.2196/18825 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. e18825 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuxin Zhao ◽  
Sixiang Cheng ◽  
Xiaoyan Yu ◽  
Huilan Xu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Mining System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Source Of Infection ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Control

Background Since the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic in China in December 2019, information and discussions about COVID-19 have spread rapidly on the internet and have quickly become the focus of worldwide attention, especially on social media. Objective This study aims to investigate and analyze the public’s attention to events related to COVID-19 in China at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic (December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020) through the Sina Microblog hot search list. Methods We collected topics related to the COVID-19 epidemic on the Sina Microblog hot search list from December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020, and described the trend of public attention on COVID-19 epidemic-related topics. ROST Content Mining System version 6.0 was used to analyze the collected text for word segmentation, word frequency, and sentiment analysis. We further described the hot topic keywords and sentiment trends of public attention. We used VOSviewer to implement a visual cluster analysis of hot keywords and build a social network of public opinion content. Results The study has four main findings. First, we analyzed the changing trend of the public’s attention to the COVID-19 epidemic, which can be divided into three stages. Second, the hot topic keywords of public attention at each stage were slightly different. Third, the emotional tendency of the public toward the COVID-19 epidemic-related hot topics changed from negative to neutral, with negative emotions weakening and positive emotions increasing as a whole. Fourth, we divided the COVID-19 topics with the most public concern into five categories: the situation of the new cases of COVID-19 and its impact, frontline reporting of the epidemic and the measures of prevention and control, expert interpretation and discussion on the source of infection, medical services on the frontline of the epidemic, and focus on the worldwide epidemic and the search for suspected cases. Conclusions Our study found that social media (eg, Sina Microblog) can be used to measure public attention toward public health emergencies. During the epidemic of the novel coronavirus, a large amount of information about the COVID-19 epidemic was disseminated on Sina Microblog and received widespread public attention. We have learned about the hotspots of public concern regarding the COVID-19 epidemic. These findings can help the government and health departments better communicate with the public on health and translate public health needs into practice to create targeted measures to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19.

scholarly journals Simulating public interest: the issue of the public voice in the fee-for-carriage debate

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Williams
Keyword(s):  
Policy Process ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Media Campaigns ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Of Canada ◽  
Severe Degree ◽  
The Impact

"One of the most fractious Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC, or the Commission) policy hearings on record has recently come to a close. This was no run-of-the-mill, watch-the-paint-dry policy hearing. Tempers and passions flared as two industry titans, over-the-air (OTA) broadcasters, such as CTV and Canwest Global, and broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) such as Shaw Communications, Bell Canada and Rogers Inc. fought the battle of their lives over an issue called fee-for-carriage (FFC). The media covered the issues day in and day out. Canadians bombarded the CRTC with dose to 200,000 comments and the Government of Canada forced the CRTC to hold an additional hearing just to address the impact the decision could have on the public. With extensive media coverage and uncharacteristically active public participation, could this public policy process be deemed 'democracy in action'? This paper will argue that this is not the case. Through a discourse analysis of the debate within two distinctly differentiated public spheres -- 1) the battling media campaigns and 2) the CRTC public hearings in November and December of 2009 -- this paper will show that the public's ability to define its own interest, using its own voice, is tarnished to such a severe degree that this policy process fails"--From Introduction (page 3).

Understanding citizen engagement and concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic in China: a thematic analysis of government social media

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 865-884
Author(s):  
Lijuan Luo ◽  
Siqi Duan ◽  
Shanshan Shang ◽  
Wenfei Lyu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
User Participation ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact

PurposeIn crises such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, governments need to act in time to lead citizens toward rational reactions and disclose information effectively to the public. This paper aims to understand the content published by the government and identify how citizen engagement relates to content type and emotional valence.Design/methodology/approachThe grounded theory approach was adopted and nine types of content posted by the government were observed. The data were obtained from “People's Daily”, an official Sina Weibo account representing the voice of the Chinese government, from January 3 to June 22 in 2020.FindingsThe analysis shows that information related to emotional support and social mobilization were the most reposted, while those mentioning immoral and illegal incidents were the most liked and commented. Also, it was found that positive posts tend to attract more likes, yet with fewer reposts than neutral posts.Originality/valueThe authors adopted thematic analysis and focused on the impact of post content and valence on user participation behavior. This study expands the existing literature. The government can improve crises management capability by learning about citizen engagement behaviors on social media.

scholarly journals Chinese Public Attention to COVID-19 Epidemic: Based on Social Media

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuxin Zhao ◽  
Huilan Xu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Mining System ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Control

AbstractBackgroundSince the new coronavirus epidemic in China in December 2019, information and discussions about COVID-19 have spread rapidly on the Internet and have quickly become the focus of worldwide attention, especially on social media.ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate and analyze the public’s attention to COVID-19-related events in China at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic in China (December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020) through the Sina Microblog hot search list.MethodsWe collected topics related to the COVID-19 epidemic on the Sina Microblog hot search list from December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020 and described the trend of public attention on COVID-19 epidemic-related topics. ROST CM6.0 (ROST Content Mining System Version 6.0) was used to analyze the collected text for word segmentation, word frequency, and sentiment analysis. We further described the hot topic keywords and sentiment trends of public attention. We used VOSviewer to implement a visual cluster analysis of hot keywords and build a social network of public opinion content.ResultsThe study has four main findings. First, we analyzed the changing trend of the public’s attention to the COVID-19 epidemic, which can be divided into three stages. Second, the hot topic keywords of public attention at each stage are slightly different. In addition, the emotional tendency of the public toward the COVID-19 epidemic-related hot topics has changed from negative to neutral, with negative emotions weakening and positive emotions increasing as a whole. Finally, we divided the COVID-19 topics with the most public concern into five categories: new COVID-19 epidemics and their impact; (2) frontline reporting of the epidemic and prevention and control measures; (3) expert interpretation and discussion on the source of infection; (4) medical services on the frontline of the epidemic; and (5) focus on the global epidemic and the search for suspected cases.ConclusionsThis is the first study of public attention on the COVID-19 epidemic using a Chinese social media platform (i.e., Sina Microblog). Our study found that social media (e.g., Sina Microblog) can be used to measure public attention to public health emergencies. During the epidemic of the novel coronavirus, a large amount of information about the COVID-19 epidemic was disseminated on Sina Microblog and received widespread public attention. We have learned about the hotspots of public concern regarding the COVID-19 epidemic. These findings can help the government and health departments better communicate with the public on health and translate public health needs into practice to create targeted measures to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19.

scholarly journals Dampak Hoax di Media Sosial Facebook Terhadap Pemilih Pemula

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-61
Author(s):  
Aminah Aminah ◽  
Novita Sari
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
The Public ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
The Media ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Descriptive Method

Facebook social media is one of the media that is very influential in people's lives today. Using Facebook, the dissemination of information can be quickly conveyed to the public, especially to Facebook users. This raises concern from users in filtering information to avoid fake news. This research aims to explain to the impact of fake news on Facebook on beginner voters who have a right to vote in presidential and legislative elections in Panga District, Aceh Jaya. This study used a qualitative descriptive method. The data were collected by interviewing nine informants. The results of the study showed that Facebook is often used by beginner voters to obtain information related to electoral affairs. The number of fake news circulated throughout Facebook has effects on the beginner voters. They found it difficult to distinguish between fake and real news, were easily provoked, were easy to hate, and change their support.

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