News Organizations’ Selective Link Sharing as Gatekeeping: A Structural Topic Model Approach

Pak, Chankyung

doi:10.31235/osf.io/pt7es

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…In other words, STM enables researchers to crystalize the relationship between the subject and metadata, such as the thematic preference of different groups and the topic ow in different periods (Roberts, Stewart, Tingley, 2019). In the generating process, STM takes in the metadata of literature (e.g., the author(s) and publication time) as covariables; it was once used to explore the unique selective sharing mechanism of different media channels (Pak, 2019) as well as how the political party status affects the popularity of a topic (Roberts, Stewart, et al, 2014). Prior to formal modeling, the authors preprocess the corpus by, for example, rejecting punctuation marks, ltering pause words, and trimming high-frequency words.…”

Section: Andrews and Preece 2006mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Mothers are Less Enthusiastic About Breastfeeding than the Experts in China: Evidence from the Social Media Platform Zhihu

Fang,

Zhu,

Chen

2023

Preprint

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With attention to healthy parenting growing in China, a heated discourse on the merits and demerits of breastfeeding versus formula feeding is pushed to the forefront of social media. Using big data and content analysis methods we explore the difference between professionals and laypeople discussing the issue on one popular social media platform. We collect 100 related questions and 4447 corresponding answers from 1 January 2018 to 1 March 2022 on the Q&A platform Zhihu. We employ automated text analysis on the length of answers, attitude distribution, and high-frequency words of the two groups. Further, we analyze both groups' degrees of participation and emotion for different topics using structural topic modeling. We find the answers from professionals to be longer than those from laypeople. Professionals are more likely to express positive attitudes toward breastfeeding than laypeople. Breastfeeding was widely recommended in the professional discourse and was regarded as a mainstream and politically-correct view. However, average females (especially those with experiences of lactation) and modern mothers-to-be are defying such “conventional wisdom”.

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Section: Andrews and Preece 2006mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Mothers are Less Enthusiastic About Breastfeeding than the Experts in China: Evidence from the Social Media Platform Zhihu

Fang,

Zhu,

Chen

2023

Preprint

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“…In other words, STM enables researchers to discover relationships between topics and metadata, such as the topic preference of distinct authors or topic fluctuation across time [63]. STM assimilates document metadata (eg, authorship and time of publication) as covariates during the generative process; it has previously been used to explore the distinct selective sharing mechanisms of different media outlets [64] and how party identification affects topic prevalence [65]. Before formal modeling, the authors conducted preprocessing to clean the corpus, including discarding punctuation, filtering out stop-words, and pruning highly frequent words.…”

Section: Analytical Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Expression Differences Between Professionals and Laypeople Toward the COVID-19 Vaccine: Text Mining Approach (Preprint)

Luo¹,

Ji²,

Tang³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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BACKGROUND COVID-19 is still rampant all over the world. Until now, the COVID-19 vaccine is the most promising measure to subdue contagion and achieve herd immunity. However, public vaccination intention is suboptimal. A clear division lies between medical professionals and laypeople. While most professionals eagerly promote the vaccination campaign, some laypeople exude suspicion, hesitancy, and even opposition toward COVID-19 vaccines. OBJECTIVE This study aims to employ a text mining approach to examine expression differences and thematic disparities between the professionals and laypeople within the COVID-19 vaccine context. METHODS We collected 3196 answers under 65 filtered questions concerning the COVID-19 vaccine from the China-based question and answer forum Zhihu. The questions were classified into 5 categories depending on their contents and description: adverse reactions, vaccination, vaccine effectiveness, social implications of vaccine, and vaccine development. Respondents were also manually coded into two groups: professional and laypeople. Automated text analysis was performed to calculate fundamental expression characteristics of the 2 groups, including answer length, attitude distribution, and high-frequency words. Furthermore, structural topic modeling (STM), as a cutting-edge branch in the topic modeling family, was used to extract topics under each question category, and thematic disparities were evaluated between the 2 groups. RESULTS Laypeople are more prevailing in the COVID-19 vaccine–related discussion. Regarding differences in expression characteristics, the professionals posted longer answers and showed a conservative stance toward vaccine effectiveness than did laypeople. Laypeople mentioned countries more frequently, while professionals were inclined to raise medical jargon. STM discloses prominent topics under each question category. Statistical analysis revealed that laypeople preferred the “safety of Chinese-made vaccine” topic and other vaccine-related issues in other countries. However, the professionals paid more attention to medical principles and professional standards underlying the COVID-19 vaccine. With respect to topics associated with the social implications of vaccines, the 2 groups showed no significant difference. CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate that laypeople and professionals share some common grounds but also hold divergent focuses toward the COVID-19 vaccine issue. These incongruities can be summarized as “qualitatively different” in perspective rather than “quantitatively different” in scientific knowledge. Among those questions closely associated with medical expertise, the “qualitatively different” characteristic is quite conspicuous. This study boosts the current understanding of how the public perceives the COVID-19 vaccine, in a more nuanced way. Web-based question and answer forums are a bonanza for examining perception discrepancies among various identities. STM further exhibits unique strengths over the traditional topic modeling method in statistically testing the topic preference of diverse groups. Public health practitioners should be keenly aware of the cognitive differences between professionals and laypeople, and pay special attention to the topics with significant inconsistency across groups to build consensus and promote vaccination effectively.

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“…When trained for a traditional newsroom culture, journalists tend to struggle to adopt one of open participation (Lewis & Westlund, 2015). This tension can also be found among social media and newsroom editors (Pak, 2019).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, given the huge amount of information available on social media, simply publishing news on Twitter is insufficient to compete successfully for the limited attention of users. The type of content published can make the difference (Pak, 2019), as can the use of specific features of social media platforms that allow interaction with users and increase their interest and reactions. Users can be active participants in the diffusion process because their engagement with news content (i.e.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media News: A Comparative Analysis of the Journalistic Uses of Twitter

Rega

2021

cejc

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The article investigates media organizations’ strategies to adapt to the new media ecology in which Twitter is renewing traditional news-production routines. Two main strategies are identified: a traditional approach aimed at one-way news dissemination, and a journalistic model that recasts the relationship with the audience and uses Twitter as a community building tool. It has been assumed that media outlets’ endeavours to gain centrality in the information system are associated with their ability in using the appropriate communication tools of Twitter and the implementation of strategies based on interaction with users. Based on a comparative analysis of Twitter uses by newspapers in 31 countries, the study shows that the ability to manage the structural elements of the platform is widespread among media organizations. Concurrently, the relational strategy, i.e. the investment in community-building, although less widespread, is present in many countries and leads to an increase level of user involvement.

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News Organizations’ Selective Link Sharing as Gatekeeping: A Structural Topic Model Approach

Cited by 4 publications

References 48 publications

Why Mothers are Less Enthusiastic About Breastfeeding than the Experts in China: Evidence from the Social Media Platform Zhihu

Why Mothers are Less Enthusiastic About Breastfeeding than the Experts in China: Evidence from the Social Media Platform Zhihu

Exploring the Expression Differences Between Professionals and Laypeople Toward the COVID-19 Vaccine: Text Mining Approach (Preprint)

Social Media News: A Comparative Analysis of the Journalistic Uses of Twitter

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