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.

Social Media in China

2014 ◽  
pp. 238-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Robert Masterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Control Information ◽  
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 (Magistad, 2012). 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.

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. 

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.

scholarly journals Crisis Coordination and the Role of Social Media in Response to COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 698-705
Author(s):  
Yiran Li ◽  
Yanto Chandra ◽  
Naim Kapucu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Information Overload ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
The Government ◽  
Use Of Social Media

The commentary addresses the government’s role in mitigating information asymmetry problems during pandemic crisis response. We use the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, as a case to show the use of social media as a key mechanism in shaping the actions of the central government in its coordination with the local governments during the pandemic response. The Chinese government effectively collaborated with a social media platform to not only create a dedicated channel to allow citizens to post information about the pandemic to accelerate the speed of relief but also mobilize citizens and nonprofit organizations to support government response and recovery efforts. This suggests that social media can provide a venue for the government to not only tackle the information overload but also mitigate the friction among levels of governments.

scholarly journals Content Analysis of Social Media: Public and Government Response to COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Gugun Geusan Akbar ◽  
Dede Kurniadi ◽  
Nita Nurliawati
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Complete Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Government Response ◽  
Response Data ◽  
The Government ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Support Decision Making

Nowadays, the use of social media to analyze disaster responses has become important. However, its application to support decision-making by the Government during disasters still present significant challenges. This article offers a complete analysis of the response of the public and the Government in dealing with the COVID-19 Pandemics in Indonesia. The content analysis uses to analyze the tweet post on Twitter to determine the public and government response. Data was collected from public and government tweets on Twitter and producing 11,578 community tweets from the public and 958 tweets from the government account. This data was collected from 2nd March until 15th April 2020. Public comments are sorted into six categories of comments, that is fate, logic, government mention, worry, scientist, and impression, while sentiments are classified as positive, negative, and neutral. Government comments are sorted into eight categories, namely information, education, operating, warnings, resources provision, volunteer recruitment, and rumors management. The results showed that the public encourages and supports the Government to cope with a pandemic think rationally and logically in dealing with this Pandemic. In addition, the study indicates that the Government has not used social media as a medium for communicating with the public. The quality of government response is not good, especially in the categories of information on operations, warnings, resources provision, recruitment of volunteers, and rumors management. The implication of this study suggests how the data might be useful for the Government in delivering information during the Pandemic.

How to Tell the Truth without Outraging the Press?

MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 37-51
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. 

scholarly journals ANALISIS MESEJ DAKWAH ISLAMIAH DALAM HALAMAN FACEBOOK

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (SI1) ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Mohd Baharudin Othman ◽  
Mohd Nazif Badruddin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Framing Theory ◽  
Delivery Strategy ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Facebook Pages

  The rapid development of new media gives an impact on almost every corner of people’s life. This development also opens the opportunity to the missionaries to use social media as a medium to deliver Islamic propagation. Hence, the transformation occurs in the method of Islamic propagation delivery among the missionaries who started using social media, especially Facebook. This is because social media is suitable as a compliment and an alternative medium to the da’wah medium of the existing. However, the use of social media in delivering the message of Islamic da’wah should be carried out prudently and wisely to different audiences. Accordingly, this research aims to identify the category of the message, the function of the messages, and the delivery strategy of Islamic propagation through the medium of Facebook of five elected missionaries. Five Facebook pages have been chosen and analyzed using the thematic analysis with NVivo software. The theme of this study has been prepared in advance because this research involves the knowledge related to the Islamic laws that have been established by the tenets of Islam. The theoretical framework of this study is built base on the Framing Theory. The results obtained showed that the majority of the messages displayed in the selected Facebook pages categorized as religious missionaries. The function to encourage charity is a message that often discussed in the analyzed entry. However, the strategy of choice for missionaries to be applied on their Facebook page is the writing that has the effect of information. The findings can be referred to the missionaries and also to the government agencies and NGOs in practicing and strategizing before the establishment of Islamic missionary message is disseminated to the public. Utilizing an accurate delivery strategy will be more appealing and provide a positive impact on society.   Keywords: Social media, Facebook, Islamic Da’wah, Framing Theory

scholarly journals Does the Chinese government engage in online public debates? A case study of political communications around the building of an oil refinery in Kunming, China

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 158-176
Author(s):  
Qingning Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Oil Refinery ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Communications ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Government ◽  
Public Concerns

This article discusses how the Chinese government engages in online political debates and whether it adjusts its policies to respond to public concerns raised in such debates. This research explores government actions and discourses by using debates between Chinese net-users and the government around the building of an oil refinery in Kunming as a case study. It finds that the government used traditional party newspapers and social media as platforms to express its opinions and to interact with net-users regarding the oil refinery. The reports published in party media and government social media posts acknowledged the government’s awareness of the public’s concerns, demonstrated their reaction to the concerns and reinforced the government’s agenda. However, although the government engaged with the debate, it did not change its decisions about the oil refinery to respond to the public concerns raised online.

scholarly journals Tax-funded digital government communication in Austria: Members of the government on Facebook

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-164
Author(s):  
Uta Russmann ◽  
Markus Hametner ◽  
Eduard Posch
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Digital Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
Government Communication ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
Multi Method Approach ◽  
The Government ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Method Approach

For a few years now, members of the government in Austria have been using Facebook to reach out to the public as well as to the mass media. Following normative guidelines and regulations, tax-funded government communication should be neutral, informative and autonomous of party politics. Using a multi-method approach, combining a structural analysis of formal criteria of Facebook accounts and an automated quantitative content analysis of Facebook postings, we investigated to what extent the official Facebook accounts of members of the last two Austrian governments were an exclusive tool for digital government communication. We found that not all representatives made use of Facebook. Moreover, tax-funded digital government communication on Facebook was not all neutral and autonomous of party politics. Based on our findings, we conclude that there is a lack of regulatory framework in Austria to govern tax-funded use of social media.

The Use of Social Media by the Botswana Government and Governance of Liquid Communication

Mousaion ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tshepho Lydia Mosweu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Customer Service ◽  
Community Involvement ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Service Access ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Social media as a communication tool has enabled governments around the world to interact with citizens for customer service, access to information and to direct community involvement needs. The trends around the world show recognition by governments that social media content may constitute records and should be managed accordingly. The literature shows that governments and organisations in other countries, particularly in Europe, have social media policies and strategies to guide the management of social media content, but there is less evidence among African countries. Thus the purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of usage of social media by the Botswana government in order to determine the necessity for the governance of liquid communication. Liquid communication here refers to the type of communication that goes easily back and forth between participants involved through social media. The ARMA principle of availability requires that where there is information governance, an organisation shall maintain its information assets in a manner that ensures their timely, efficient and accurate retrieval. The study adopted a qualitative case study approach where data were collected through documentary reviews and interviews among purposively selected employees of the Botswana government. This study revealed that the Botswana government has been actively using social media platforms to interact with its citizens since 2011 for increased access, usage and awareness of services offered by the government. Nonetheless, the study revealed that the government had no official documentation on the use of social media, and policies and strategies that dealt with the governance of liquid communication. This study recommends the governance of liquid communication to ensure timely, efficient and accurate retrieval when needed for business purposes.

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