Drawing upon the approach of strategic framing, this study investigated how China’s state-run media mobilize foreign propaganda machine and use specific patterns to describe the 2019 Hong Kong protests on Twitter. It also shed light on the heterogeneity of both production and reception of the strategic frames used by state media. Structural topic modeling was employed to analyze a large amount of Twitter content (i.e., 14,412 tweets) posted by 13 verified organizational accounts, and six strategic frames were identified as conflicts and violence, calling for stability and order, marginalizing protests, criticizing the West as accomplices, delegitimizing protests, and social and economic disruption. These frames highlighted insider–outsider and causes and consequences as two overarching communication strategies. The results also revealed that the bureaucratic rank of state media and the engagement rate of each tweet were closely associated with the content prevalence of various strategic frames. In addition to enhancing our understanding of the construction of “protest paradigm” against the social media context, these empirical findings uncover the often overlooked mobility and flexibility of China’s state media discourse as well as the communication ecology shaped and consolidated by the increasing importance state media communicators attach to online engagement metrics.
Twitter aggregates, in real time, the most popular search terms as trending lists and allows users to learn what is happening in the world. However, reports worldwide have found that networks of humans and bots often hijack Twitter’s trending algorithm to push false narratives. However, do Twitter trending lists influence individuals’ social and personal agendas? This study examines the extent to which Twitter trends shape individuals’ perceptions of social reality. Through a 2 (exposure vs. no exposure to Twitter trends) × 2 (high vs. low context familiarity) online experiment (N = 319), we found that (1) Twitter trends significantly shape people’s perceived social agendas and ultimately influence their personal agendas and (2) context similarity significantly influences both social and personal agendas, and the effects are consistent across different context levels. This study focuses on the individual-level agenda-setting effect of social media trends and provides practical implications for social platform responsibility.
There is a remarkable gap between scientific experts and the nonscientific public regarding the safety of food imported from nuclear-contaminated areas in Japan. How socio-scientific issues such as post-Fukushima food imports are framed in media discourse may have effects on the way people perceive and reason about potential threats, and, in turn, influence government-initiated policies and regulations. In this study, semantic network analysis is performed to examine the diverse media representations of post-Fukushima food imports across information-seeking sources (mass media and search-based media) and three Chinese societies (Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan). We found that media representation of the crisis differs across sources and sociopolitical contexts. It is also discussed how these channel-specific and contextual factors may affect public opinion. This knowledge can enhance regulatory authorities’ informed decision-making about food safety issues, guide crisis professionals’ communication efforts, and call for a more context-sensitive approach to public health crisis management.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.