The politics of emotion during COVID-19: Turning fear into pride in China's WeChat discourse

In this article, we analyse the most popular stories that circulated on WeChat public accounts concerning personalized experiences of COVID-19 in China during the first three months of 2020. Among these non-fictional online writings, we probe into ‘individual’ and mediated experiences with the coronavirus in China by questioning the visualizations and discourses of these stories and their producers, as well as the concomitant emotions they invoked. Parallel to the changing situation of the pandemic, we observe a diachronic evolution of emotions, from fear and doubt to (nationalist) pride. While articulating personalized experiences of the pandemic from disparate perspectives, the stories invariably built on, and were shaped by, the workings of the WeChat public account platform (公众平台) as evidenced by its content moderation logic and political economy. The analysis shows that emotions, rather than facts, propel the popularity of these stories. The measures taken by the state are mostly applauded, and only sometimes questioned; tragic memories are rewritten, and a political and economic order is consolidated.

The manuscript journals of the trial of Charles I: new evidence on their provenance and purpose*

Historians of the trial of Charles I will be familiar with the two copies of the manuscript journals kept in The National Archives of the U.K. and the U.K. Parliamentary Archives. Besides these manuscripts, two further copies of the trial proceedings are held in the Beinecke Library, Yale, and in the British Library. This article compares these versions to propose a tentative document history of the journals, suggesting that these manuscripts were produced for different purposes: what began as the basis for an authoritative public account of the trial later became a text intended for a more select legal audience.

Research on the influence of college students’ crowd decision-making on improving the content of public account tweets

Purpose As human beings step into the age of information network, big data technology is constantly improving the intelligence level of various agents such as individuals and enterprises. The crowd decision-making of the intellectual community plays an important role in the active participation of many individuals and schools in giving their wisdom, effectively solve the problems of negative internet communication, single publicity media and unprofessional promotion team in WeChat public account. Design/methodology/approach This paper aims to optimize the content and improve the effectiveness of network ideological and political education in universities. This study analyzes five highly popular WeChat public accounts at the Central University of Finance and Economics in 2019. It obtains the popularity index of tweets using the WeChat communication index algorithm and finds that the important factors that influence tweet popularity are release time and content value. Findings To improve the public account tweets, this study highlights the connection between the tweets’ value and students’ emotional needs, which enhances the value of tweet content in students’ life and provides more original and distinctive content. Originality/value This study found that the content and interest of college students are tweet time, tweet value and tweet content. Therefore, the public account of college ideological and political education should be improved from the following three aspects: realizing the connection between the value of tweet content and students’ emotional needs; enhancing the value of tweet content in students’ life and learning; and insisting on the original and distinctive original intention of tweet content.

Application of WeChat Public Account in Lifestyle Management of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: a Cross-sectional Study

BackgroundLifestyle management has been proved to improve both metabolic and reproductive outcomes for women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). In China, WeChat has become the most popular social media platform. Previous studies have confirmed the effectiveness of WeChat in health intervention and its potential to improve health behaviours. Therefore the present study tried to investigate the efficacy of online education through WeChat public account on the lifestyle interventions of women with PCOS.MethodsWe set up a cross-sectional study between January 2020 and July 2020. Data were collected through online questionnaires. All participants completed a questionnaire, including age, educational level, WeChat activeness, physical exercise, dietary habits, self-reported symptoms and medical history.ResultsA total of 258 women were included in this study, including 96 women with PCOS (PCOS group) and 162 women without PCOS (control group). Among them, 130 women followed our WeChat public account (follower group) and 128 women did not follow the WeChat public account (non-follower group). There were no significant differences in terms of physical activity assessment and dietary assessment between the PCOS and control groups (P>0.05), neither between the followers and non-follower groups (P>0.05). ConclusionsApplication of WeChat public account seems useless in lifestyle management for women with PCOS, however, the conclusion might be limited by the small sample size.

A comparison of health communication effectiveness and the improvement of management strategies: taking two Chinese traditional medicine hospitals’ WeChat public accounts as examples

Background In the light of “Internet plus”, hospitals are following the trend of using mobile internet and adopting a strategy of spreading public health knowledge through mobile terminals. WeChat is a social media with the largest number of users in China. Its public account has become the most popular service among the public. Methods We examine the health communication of medical institutions on social media platforms. The WeChat public accounts of Zhejiang Provincial Chinese Traditional Medicine Hospital and Jiangxi Provincial Chinese Traditional Medicine Hospital were taken as cases to measure the communication effect from the following dimensions: update interval, content positioning and design, numbers of clicks and likes as well as topic types. Results The update interval of WeChat public account of Jiangxi Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine was regular, compared with that of the other hospital. The accounts of the two hospitals both set up special sections to facilitate patients to obtain medical services online. There is an extremely significant difference between the two hospitals’ mean numbers of clicks (p < 0. 001), compared with no significant difference between their mean numbers of likes. One-way analysis of variance suggests the type of topic on posts is significantly correlated with the number of clicks. Moreover, there is an extremely significant difference between public health knowledge and news propaganda. Conclusion The development of hospitals’ WeChat public accounts can promote people’s health and equity in accessing medical information and service, and also boost “Internet plus health care” service. The topic type of hospital’s news publicity is paid a relatively lower attention by users. Therefore, hospitals’ WeChat public accounts need to adjust their strategy from propaganda-oriented to users-centered, with topic planning and posts designed to fulfill users’ needs.

Interlude

“Interlude” aligns Mesmer’s “crisis state” with Freud’s 1909 discussion of the interrupted lecture. Intended to explain psychoanalysis to an America audience, Freud’s analogy also informs the psychological insights Douglass engages when describing the many interruptions he experienced. Two examples—an encounter in Five Points and at a political convention in Philadelphia—show his traumatic theory in action. The public account of such exchanges generates a form of immediacy that Douglass strives to recreate in his telescoping autobiographical narratives. With an assist from Kaja Silverman and Sara Ahmed, “Interlude” follows two analogies in the Douglass archive where he compares people to things (a speeding train, Paganini’s violin) in a vibrant new way. Thinking of his final work as an experiment in new media thickens their archival value and reveals the intersection of media and memory that Douglass enlists to transform the impossible demands of freedom into a “willful ecology” of support.