Full length articleNot all emotions are created equal: Expressive behavior of the networked public on China's social media site
Introduction
There has been a tacit framing in academic and popular discussion depicting social media as politically progressive (Dahlberg, 2005). Indisputably, social media have lowered the threshold with new and different forms for civic engagement and political participation, and the tightly controlled media environment is particularly interesting in this respect (Rauchfleisch & Schäfer, 2014). A rich body of literature exists that centers on the evolving tactics of Internet control and censorship in China (e.g., King, Pan, & Roberts, 2013). At the same time, the democratic implications of China's social media spaces have been praised as promoting a form of unofficial democracy available to Chinese citizens (Yang, 2013b). The blocked access to foreign social networking sites (SNSs) has left the field open to homegrown social media platforms on which vibrant civic discussion proliferates (Fuchs, 2015). There has actually been very little scholarly investigation of the content and purpose of the talk on Chinese social media forums, though the bursts of SNS activity accompanying large-scale crises or protests have been widely noted (Huang & Sun, 2014).
Online interaction, like any other social activity, evokes emotions as well as cultivating emotional styles and social environments (Laniado, Kaltenbrunner, Castillo, & Morell, 2012). Boyd, Golder, and Lotan (2010) has observed that digital activism involves developing social inclusion and recognition as much as expressing political statements. Posts may be political in content much of the time, but their language often contains figurative devices that appeal to the senses, which makes interactions more closely aligned with the expression of emotion, especially when an online discussion is of a topic with an ideological aspect (Himelboim et al., 2014).
This study considered conversations on China's Twitter-like microblogging service Weibo. Some subjects are highly regulated or entirely censored on Weibo, but there are issues about which Weibo debates are relatively open and much less tightly regulated (Rauchfleisch & Schäfer, 2014). Weibo conversations related to food safety, for example, are often heated and emotional, allowing for a degree of open criticism of government policy and officials (Yang, 2013a). There has been a spate of food safety alerts in recent years, and the government's failure to stem them has sparked public outcry in Chinese society. A number of social, political, and ethical issues beyond nutrition and health have been raised (Yan, 2012). Although health risks are frequently mentioned, many people go on to discuss some of the social and political consequences, because many Chinese citizens see the root cause of food safety problems as poor governance (Ortega, Wang, Olynk, Wu, & Bai, 2012). Weibo affords netizens the opportunity to express their opinions about a subject of political consequence with personal relevance to themselves.
This study therefore considered Weibo discussions of food safety issues in search of a better understanding of expression in political talk in China's restricted environment. Much of the online political discussion in China revolves around “expressive” actions which have no practical goal like mobilization (Christensen, 2011), nor any specific intention to reach a consensus through deliberation (Dahlberg, 2005). We instead put forward an “expressive” account of rationality as being more accurate for assessing civic engagement increasingly taking place in China's social media spaces.
Section snippets
The expressive form of rationality in SNS use
Researchers in the field of political communication often conceive of digital media as an instrument for accomplishing strategic goals (Ward, 2008). SNSs such as Facebook and Twitter are discussed as an alternative to traditional media for political persuasion, or as an alternate way for politicians to build advocacy support (Graham, Broersma, Hazelhoff, & van't Haar, 2013), or for activists to foment and organize (Christensen, 2011). Habermas, however, emphasizes what he terms the
Methods
These questions were addressed using posts concerning food safety on Sina Weibo, the most visited social network and microblogging site in China. Whist Tencent's WeChat, the leading China-based instant messaging app, has surpassed Sina Weibo in size and popularity, Weibo still stands as one of the top mediums for news and conversation flows on socially popular topics in China's restrictive media environment. Using the key terms “food safety” and “government” and the period from June 1 to August
Connectedness
To answer the question about connectedness (RQ1), the centrality of each poster in the discussion network was evaluated in terms of degree, in degree and out degree. Fig. 1 shows that the degrees of nodes followed a power law distribution (alpha = 2.54, Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic D = 0.02, p = 0.07). Dynamic centrality3
Discussion and implications
To date, the bulk of SNS research examining the spread of ideas and attitudes has focused on opinion influencers or network structural signatures. This study has moved forward to draw upon the mechanisms linking social ties and emotional contagion, examining the characteristics of content that spreads across users' online networks and shapes their expressive actions. A systematic approach that combines machine-learning textual analysis with social network analysis allows us to measure this
Acknowledgments
The study was supported in part by a Faculty Research Grant (FRG2/14-15/023) and the Strategic Development Fund (SDF10-0526-P10-b) from Hong Kong Baptist University, and the National Natural and Science Foundation of China (NSFC: 61472183). We also thank Mr. Zhen-Ting Yu at the National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University for his assistance in this research project.
Yunya Song is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Director of the Applied Communication Research Lab, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research on communication and media politics has appeared in, among other journals, International Journal of Press/Politics, Media, Culture & Society, and Public Relations Review.
References (59)
- et al.
The political blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. election: divided they blog
- et al.
Distinguishing influence-based contagion from homophily-driven diffusion in dynamic networks
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(2009) The personalization of politics: political identity, social media, and changing patterns of participation
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
(2012)- et al.
What makes online content viral?
Journal of Marketing Research
(2012) - et al.
Harnessing the power of the oh-so-social web
MIT Sloan Management Review
(2008) Expanding dialogue: the Internet, the public sphere and prospects for transnational democracy
The Sociological Review
(2004)- et al.
Tweet, tweet, retweet: conversational aspects of retweeting on Twitter
- et al.
From centrality to temporary fame: dynamic centrality in complex networks
Complexity
(2006) - et al.
Measuring user influence in Twitter: the million follower fallacy
ICWSM
(2010) - et al.
An analysis of verifications in microblogging social networks – Sina Weibo
Flow, diversity, form, and influence of political talk in social-media-based public forums
Human Communication Research
Twitter revolutions? Addressing social media and dissent
The Communication Review
The Internet as public sphere or culture industry? From pessimism to hope and back
International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics
Cognition and emotion
An argument for basic emotions
Cognition & Emotion
You are who you talk to: detecting roles in usenet newsgroups
Social cognition
Baidu, Weibo and Renren: the global political economy of social media in China
Asian Journal of Communication
Everyday political talk in the Internet-based public sphere
Between broadcasting political messages and interacting with voters
Information, Communication & Society
Practical reasoning and emotion
Theory of communicative action volume one: Reason and the rationalization of society
Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy
Reply distribution in online discussions: a comparative network analysis of political and health newsgroups
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
Civil society and online political discourse: the network structure of unrestricted discussions
Communication Research
Valence-based homophily on Twitter: network analysis of emotions and political talk in the 2012 presidential election
New Media & Society
Weibo network, information diffusion and implications for collective action in China
Information, Communication & Society
Making large–scale SVM learning practical
The expressive rationality of inaccurate perceptions
Behavioral & Brain Sciences
Cited by (46)
Exploring the impact of sentiment on multi-dimensional information dissemination using COVID-19 data in China
2023, Computers in Human BehaviorService failures in times of crisis: An analysis of eWOM emotionality
2023, Journal of Business ResearchWhat makes people share political content on social media? The role of emotion, authority and ideology
2022, Computers in Human BehaviorRisk sharing on Twitter: Social amplification and attenuation of risk in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic
2022, Computers in Human BehaviorCitation Excerpt :While trust in a source of information and interpersonal online discussions might make social media users more confident in sharing information about health risks, concerns about misinformation might make them more hesitant to do so, especially since the number of Americans (43%) who think the public is responsible for preventing the spread of fabricated news is almost equal to the those who think governments (45%) or social networking sites and search engines (42%) should shoulder the responsibility (Barthel et al., 2016). As patients increasingly turn to social media and online sources for health information, trust in risk information available online has raised concerns among medical and mass communication scholars (Lin, Levordashka, & Utz, 2016; Song, Dai, & Wang, 2016). Even before social media were such a staple in consumers' health news diet, trust in health information on the Internet was positively associated with people's discussion of health-related topics, online health information seeking, and online information sharing (Hou & Shim, 2010).
What matters most in the responses to political campaign posts on social media: The candidate, message frame, or message format?
2021, Computers in Human BehaviorCitation Excerpt :Content analysis is widely adopted to study frames (e.g., Dekavalla, 2016; Shehata, 2014) and the analysis of social media comments on political campaign pages (e.g., Hagar, 2014; Woolley, Limperos, & Oliver, 2010). Automated processing can also help extract useful information from articles in a more objective manner (e.g., Hong & Nadler, 2012; Song, Dai, & Wang, 2016). While human coders were responsible for coding message frames and formats, a computational method was used to count user responses and to code the comments.
Yunya Song is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Director of the Applied Communication Research Lab, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research on communication and media politics has appeared in, among other journals, International Journal of Press/Politics, Media, Culture & Society, and Public Relations Review.
Dr. Dai is an Associate Professor at the National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University. His research on natural language processing, text mining and social media analysis has appeared in various top-tier journals and conference proceedings.
Jia Wang is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Division of Social Science, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.