scholarly journals Emotional Branding of China’s State-Owned Enterprises on Sina Weibo

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 30-45
Author(s):  
Ying Hua
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
National Economy ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
The Public ◽  
Emotional Bonding ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Chinese Characteristics ◽  
Branding Strategies ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
Shed Light

In order to provide the interpersonal, rhetoric and semiotic insights for studying corporate emotional branding discourse on social media, this study attempts to target China’s state-owned enterprises which represent the pillars of national economy with Chinese characteristics and shed light on the discourse realizations of their emotional branding strategies from the textual and interpersonal perspectives. Specifically, the present study focuses on the two kinds of textual and interpersonal representations on China-based Sina Weibo: 1) the use of stylistic features; 2) the use of attitudinal appeals. A corpus of forty-day updates of the three giant Chinese state-owned enterprises on Sina Weibo is retrieved and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results suggest the prevalence of involving stylistic features, the proliferation of affect and judgment appeals and the hybridization of appreciation and affect/judgment, which posits interdiscursivity and intertextuality in communicative functions. China’s state-owned enterprises communicate to forge emotional bonding with the public other than promote their products. This pragmatic shift towards solidarity facework is indicative of a transcultural phenomenon elicited by digital globalization and the neoliberalist trend in China’s national economy.

scholarly journals Social Media Rumor Refuter Feature Analysis and Crowd Identification Based on XGBoost and NLP

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (14) ◽  
pp. 4711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zongmin Li ◽  
Qi Zhang ◽  
Yuhong Wang ◽  
Shihang Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Classification Model ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Feature Analysis ◽  
Online Information ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
Machine Learning Methods ◽  
Model Training ◽  
Shed Light

One prominent dark side of online information behavior is the spreading of rumors. The feature analysis and crowd identification of social media rumor refuters based on machine learning methods can shed light on the rumor refutation process. This paper analyzed the association between user features and rumor refuting behavior in five main rumor categories: economics, society, disaster, politics, and military. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques are applied to quantify the user’s sentiment tendency and recent interests. Then, those results were combined with other personalized features to train an XGBoost classification model, and potential refuters can be identified. Information from 58,807 Sina Weibo users (including their 646,877 microblogs) for the five anti-rumor microblog categories was collected for model training and feature analysis. The results revealed that there were significant differences between rumor stiflers and refuters, as well as between refuters for different categories. Refuters tended to be more active on social media and a large proportion of them gathered in more developed regions. Tweeting history was a vital reference as well, and refuters showed higher interest in topics related with the rumor refuting message. Meanwhile, features such as gender, age, user labels and sentiment tendency also varied between refuters considering categories.

Engaged Political Science

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-262
Author(s):  
Matthew Wood
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Media ◽  
Shed Light

Political scientists are wary of engaging with ‘the public’ on mainstream and social media because they fear those mediums fail to get across the deep and nuanced argument they develop in their own research. This article suggests a way of justifying public engagement that begins not with debates about the ethical and political concerns of doing this in practice (of which there are many), but how we as political scientists justify public media engagement to ourselves on the basis of the ethical and political process of ‘doing’ political science. As such, this article identifies the disciplinary basis upon which we may justify media-driven public engagement as an integral part of political science as an academic enterprise. Drawing on current epistemological debates in political science, the article characterises moments of political research as impressionistic exercises, which require public engagement. This means making the public aware of the deep and valuable insights of political science, in a way that sketches out how the discipline can shed light on important social and political phenomena, thereby informing our own scholarly thinking, and that of those we engage with.

An everyday glimpse of the nation: NHK’s morning drama (asadora) and rituality

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scherer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Broadcaster ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Shed Light

NHK’s morning drama (asadora) has been an important institution on Japanese television since the 1960s and is also known as ‘national drama’. This article discusses this media format in the context of rituals and nationhood: watching asadora has become an everyday ritual that can convey a sense of national unity, and the series functions as a ‘media ritual’ that naturalizes the concept of the Japanese nation, thereby also strengthening the symbolic power of the public broadcaster NHK. As the example of Hiyokko (2017) shows, the producers of this series evoke collective memory and nostalgia by depicting everyday culture and large, nationally charged events such as the 1964 Olympic Games. Reflecting on asadora can shed light on the political and ideological dimensions of seemingly ‘banal’ media products as well as provide more general insights into the development of television in times of social media and the disappearance of the ‘national’ TV audience.

Communicative functions of emoji sequences on Sina Weibo

First Monday ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Ge ◽  
Susan C. Herring
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
Graphical Language ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Mediated Discourse ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Further Development

The popular press is currently rife with speculation that emoji are becoming a global, digitally-mediated language. Sequences of emoji that function like verbal utterances potentially lend strong support to this claim. We employ computer-mediated discourse analysis to analyze the pragmatic meanings conveyed through emoji sequences and their rhetorical relations with accompanying text, focusing on posts by social media influencers and their followers on a popular Chinese social media platform. The findings show that the emoji sequences can function pragmatically like verbal utterances and form relations with textual propositions, although their usage differs from textual utterances in several respects. We also observed user innovations that make the sequences more language like, although there is not as yet a fixed grammar of emoji sequences. We characterize this emoji use as an emergent graphical language, with the caveats that it is not yet a fully-formed language and that the Chinese emoji language that is emerging is different from the English variety, and therefore emoji are not a universal language. In order to promote the further development of emoji language(s), we advance recommendations for emoji design grounded in linguistic principles.

Microblogging (Weibo) and Environmental Nonprofit Organizations in China

2015 ◽  
pp. 94-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Ma ◽  
Zhibin Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Policy Advocacy ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Efficient Information ◽  
Practical Implications

Environmental Nonprofit Organizations (ENPOs) in China have been actively employing microblogging (e.g., Sina Weibo) and other social media. This chapter, with a case of Wuhan FON in a nationwide campaign of “I gauge air quality for my motherland,” examines the key strategies and tactics Chinese ENPOs adopted in using social media to enhance their communicative functions and mobilizing capacities in the unique nonprofit environment of China. The case demonstrates that social media utilization can effectively help Chinese ENPOs in policy advocacy, especially through more efficient information dissemination. This chapter also identifies the major challenges faced by Chinese ENPOs in social media use and the corresponding solutions. It concludes with the discussions on the theoretical and practical implications of the case as well as several promising research avenues in this field.

Social media as public opinion: How journalists use social media to represent public opinion

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 1070-1086 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon C McGregor
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Press ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Shed Light

Public opinion, as necessary a concept it is to the underpinnings of democracy, is a socially constructed representation of the public that is forged by the methods and data from which it is derived, as well as how it is understood by those tasked with evaluating and utilizing it. I examine how social media manifests as public opinion in the news and how these practices shape journalistic routines. I draw from a content analysis of news stories about the 2016 US election, as well as interviews with journalists, to shed light on evolving practices that inform the use of social media to represent public opinion. I find that despite social media users not reflecting the electorate, the press reported online sentiments and trends as a form of public opinion that services the horserace narrative and complements survey polling and vox populi quotes. These practices are woven into professional routines – journalists looked to social media to reflect public opinion, especially in the wake of media events like debates. Journalists worried about an overreliance on social media to inform coverage, especially Dataminr alerts and journalists’ own highly curated Twitter feeds. Hybrid flows of information between journalists, campaigns, and social media companies inform conceptions of public opinion.

scholarly journals Grappling With the COVID-19 Health Crisis: Content Analysis of Communication Strategies and Their Effects on Public Engagement on Social Media (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy Sing Bik Ngai ◽  
Rita Gill Singh ◽  
Wenze Lu ◽  
Alex Chun Koon
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Disease Prevention ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
The Public ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
External Sources ◽  
New Evidence

BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an unprecedented challenge to governments worldwide. Effective government communication of COVID-19 information with the public is of crucial importance. OBJECTIVE We investigate how the most-read state-owned newspaper in China, People’s Daily, used an online social networking site, Sina Weibo, to communicate about COVID-19 and whether this could engage the public. The objective of this study is to develop an integrated framework to examine the content, message style, and interactive features of COVID-19–related posts and determine their effects on public engagement in the largest social media network in China. METHODS Content analysis was employed to scrutinize 608 COVID-19 posts, and coding was performed on three main dimensions: content, message style, and interactive features. The content dimension was coded into six subdimensions: action, new evidence, reassurance, disease prevention, health care services, and uncertainty, and the style dimension was coded into the subdimensions of narrative and nonnarrative. As for interactive features, they were coded into links to external sources, use of hashtags, use of questions to solicit feedback, and use of multimedia. Public engagement was measured in the form of the number of shares, comments, and likes on the People’s Daily’s Sina Weibo account from January 20, 2020, to March 11, 2020, to reveal the association between different levels of public engagement and communication strategies. A one-way analysis of variance followed by a post-hoc Tukey test and negative binomial regression analysis were employed to generate the results. RESULTS We found that although the content frames of action, new evidence, and reassurance delivered in a nonnarrative style were predominant in COVID-19 communication by the government, posts related to new evidence and a nonnarrative style were strong negative predictors of the number of shares. In terms of generating a high number of shares, it was found that disease prevention posts delivered in a narrative style were able to achieve this purpose. Additionally, an interaction effect was found between content and style. The use of a narrative style in disease prevention posts had a significant positive effect on generating comments and likes by the Chinese public, while links to external sources fostered sharing. CONCLUSIONS These results have implications for governments, health organizations, medical professionals, the media, and researchers on their epidemic communication to engage the public. Selecting suitable communication strategies may foster active liking and sharing of posts on social media, which in turn, might raise the public’s awareness of COVID-19 and motivate them to take preventive measures. The sharing of COVID-19 posts is particularly important because this action can reach out to a large audience, potentially helping to contain the spread of the virus.

scholarly journals Grappling With the COVID-19 Health Crisis: Content Analysis of Communication Strategies and Their Effects on Public Engagement on Social Media

10.2196/21360 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. e21360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy Sing Bik Ngai ◽  
Rita Gill Singh ◽  
Wenze Lu ◽  
Alex Chun Koon
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Disease Prevention ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
The Public ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
External Sources ◽  
New Evidence

Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an unprecedented challenge to governments worldwide. Effective government communication of COVID-19 information with the public is of crucial importance. Objective We investigate how the most-read state-owned newspaper in China, People’s Daily, used an online social networking site, Sina Weibo, to communicate about COVID-19 and whether this could engage the public. The objective of this study is to develop an integrated framework to examine the content, message style, and interactive features of COVID-19–related posts and determine their effects on public engagement in the largest social media network in China. Methods Content analysis was employed to scrutinize 608 COVID-19 posts, and coding was performed on three main dimensions: content, message style, and interactive features. The content dimension was coded into six subdimensions: action, new evidence, reassurance, disease prevention, health care services, and uncertainty, and the style dimension was coded into the subdimensions of narrative and nonnarrative. As for interactive features, they were coded into links to external sources, use of hashtags, use of questions to solicit feedback, and use of multimedia. Public engagement was measured in the form of the number of shares, comments, and likes on the People’s Daily’s Sina Weibo account from January 20, 2020, to March 11, 2020, to reveal the association between different levels of public engagement and communication strategies. A one-way analysis of variance followed by a post-hoc Tukey test and negative binomial regression analysis were employed to generate the results. Results We found that although the content frames of action, new evidence, and reassurance delivered in a nonnarrative style were predominant in COVID-19 communication by the government, posts related to new evidence and a nonnarrative style were strong negative predictors of the number of shares. In terms of generating a high number of shares, it was found that disease prevention posts delivered in a narrative style were able to achieve this purpose. Additionally, an interaction effect was found between content and style. The use of a narrative style in disease prevention posts had a significant positive effect on generating comments and likes by the Chinese public, while links to external sources fostered sharing. Conclusions These results have implications for governments, health organizations, medical professionals, the media, and researchers on their epidemic communication to engage the public. Selecting suitable communication strategies may foster active liking and sharing of posts on social media, which in turn, might raise the public’s awareness of COVID-19 and motivate them to take preventive measures. The sharing of COVID-19 posts is particularly important because this action can reach out to a large audience, potentially helping to contain the spread of the virus.

scholarly journals Capturing the Interplay between Risk Perception and Social Media Posting to Support Risk Response and Decision Making

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 5220
Author(s):  
Huiyun Zhu ◽  
Kecheng Liu
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Risk Perception ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
The Public ◽  
Risk Response ◽  
The Media ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Government

This research aims to capture the interplay between risk perception and social media posting through a case study of COVID-19 in Wuhan to support risk response and decision making. Dividing users on Sina Weibo into the government, the media, the public, and other users, we address two main research questions: Whose posting affects risk perception and vice versa? How do different categories of social media users’ posts affect risk perception and vice versa? We use Granger causality analysis and impulse response functions to answer the research questions. The results show that from one perspective, the government and the media on Sina Weibo play critical roles in forming and affecting risk perceptions. From another perspective, risk perception promotes the posting of the media and the public on Sina Weibo. Since government’s posting and media’s posting can significantly enhance the public’s perceptions of risk issues, the government and the media must remain vigilant to provide credible risk-related information.

#INCLUSION – THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNICATION ON THE LEGITIMACY OF ARMED FORCES

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
EVA MOEHLECKE DE BASEGGIO ◽  
OLIVIA SCHNEIDER ◽  
TIBOR SZVIRCSEV TRESCH
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Equation Model ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Legitimation ◽  
Social Media Communication ◽  
The Impact

The Swiss Armed Forces (SAF), as part of a democratic system, depends on legitimacy. Democracy, legitimacy and the public are closely connected. In the public sphere the SAF need to be visible; it is where they are controlled and legitimated by the citizens, as part of a deliberative discussion in which political decisions are communicatively negotiated. Considering this, the meaning of political communication, including the SAF’s communication, becomes obvious as it forms the most important basis for political legitimation processes. Social media provide a new way for the SAF to communicate and interact directly with the population. The SAF’s social media communication potentially brings it closer to the people and engages them in a dialogue. The SAF can become more transparent and social media communication may increase its reputation and legitimacy. To measure the effects of social media communication, a survey of the Swiss internet population was conducted. Based on this data, a structural equation model was defined, the effects of which substantiate the assumption that the SAF benefits from being on social media in terms of broadening its reach and increasing legitimacy values.

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