Who should apologise: Expressing criticism of public figures on Chinese social media in times of COVID-19

Tao, Yingnian

doi:10.1177/09579265211013116

Cited by 20 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Social media has dismantled the authorities' monopoly of information. As a matter of fact, multiple actors were active on China's social media platforms and denounced the government during the COVID‐19 crisis (Li et al, 2020 ; Tao, 2021 ). However, as an authoritarian government, the Chinese government still has the predominant power in information management, but uses the power in a more strategic way in the social media era (Lorentzen, 2014 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of local government social media use on citizen compliance during a crisis: Evidence from the COVID‐19 crisis in China

Jiang

Tang

2022

Public Administration

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Improving citizen compliance is a major goal of public administration, especially during crises. Although social media are widely used by government agencies across the globe, it is still unclear that whether the use of social media can help local governments improve citizen compliance especially during crises. Based on an original daily panel dataset of 189 cities in China during COVID‐19, this study provides empirical evidence for the positive effect that crisis‐related social media posts published by local government agencies has on citizen compliance. In addition, this effect is mediated by the topic of prevention measures in social media posts, and is stronger in cities with higher GDP per capita, better educated citizens and wider internet coverage. The findings imply that social media is an efficient and low‐cost tool to assist local government agencies to achieve public administration objectives during crises, and its efficacy is largely dependent on regional socioeconomic status.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of local government social media use on citizen compliance during a crisis: Evidence from the COVID‐19 crisis in China

Jiang

Tang

2022

Public Administration

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“…One of the consequences of the resulting pandemic was an unprecedented reliance on social media platforms, as public health agencies and governments turned to social media as a tool for news dissemination [ 1 , 2 ]. Therefore, social media platforms provided individuals with quick access to credible information while also allowing them to share their opinions and attitudes toward the pandemic [ 3 , 4 ]. Individuals also used social media to cope with additional stresses, stay-at-home orders, and remote work environments, while displaying what scholars consider to be signs of social media addiction [ 5 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media News Use and COVID-19 Misinformation Engagement: Survey Study

Ahmed¹,

Rasul²

2022

J Med Internet Res

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Background Social media is widely used as a source of news and information regarding COVID-19. However, the abundance of misinformation on social media platforms has raised concerns regarding the spreading infodemic. Accordingly, many have questioned the utility and impact of social media news use on users’ engagement with (mis)information. Objective This study offers a conceptual framework for how social media news use influences COVID-19 misinformation engagement. More specifically, we examined how news consumption on social media leads to COVID-19 misinformation sharing by inducing belief in such misinformation. We further explored if the effects of social media news use on COVID-19 misinformation engagement depend on individual differences in cognition and personality traits. Methods We used data from an online survey panel administered by a survey agency (Qualtrics) in Singapore. The survey was conducted in March 2022, and 500 respondents answered the survey. All participants were older than 21 years and provided consent before taking part in the study. We used linear regression, mediation, and moderated mediation analyses to explore the proposed relationships between social media news use, cognitive ability, personality traits, and COVID-19 misinformation belief and sharing intentions. Results The results suggested that those who frequently used social media for news consumption were more likely to believe COVID-19 misinformation and share it on social media. Further probing the mechanism suggested that social media news use translated into sharing intent via the perceived accuracy of misinformation. Simply put, social media news users shared COVID-19 misinformation because they believed it to be accurate. We also found that those with high levels of extraversion than those with low levels were more likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate and share it. Those with high levels of neuroticism and openness than those with low levels were also likely to perceive the misinformation to be accurate. Finally, it was observed that personality traits did not significantly influence misinformation sharing at higher levels of cognitive ability, but low cognitive users largely drove misinformation sharing across personality traits. Conclusions The reliance on social media platforms for news consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified, with dire consequences for misinformation sharing. This study shows that increased social media news consumption is associated with believing and sharing COVID-19 misinformation, with low cognitive users being the most vulnerable. We offer recommendations to newsmakers, social media moderators, and policymakers toward efforts in limiting COVID-19 misinformation propagation and safeguarding citizens.

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“…Yet, changes in language can be swift, in particular on social media [82,29] where movements, such as #MeToo or Black Lives Matter, can quickly and radically shift the meaning of words and phrases. Additionally, to evade automated censorship and demonetization methods that target specific keywords and phrases, specific topics are routinely re-represented with new words and phrases [47,39,90].…”

Section: Secrets Are Hard To Identifymentioning

confidence: 99%

What Does it Mean for a Language Model to Preserve Privacy?

Brown¹,

Lee²,

Mireshghallah³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Natural language reflects our private lives and identities, making its privacy concerns as broad as those of real life. Language models lack the ability to understand the context and sensitivity of text, and tend to memorize phrases present in their training sets. An adversary can exploit this tendency to extract training data. Depending on the nature of the content and the context in which this data was collected, this could violate expectations of privacy. Thus, there is a growing interest in techniques for training language models that preserve privacy. In this paper, we discuss the mismatch between the narrow assumptions made by popular data protection techniques (data sanitization and differential privacy), and the broadness of natural language and of privacy as a social norm. We argue that existing protection methods cannot guarantee a generic and meaningful notion of privacy for language models. We conclude that language models should be trained on text data which was explicitly produced for public use.

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Who should apologise: Expressing criticism of public figures on Chinese social media in times of COVID-19

Cited by 20 publications

References 35 publications

Effects of local government social media use on citizen compliance during a crisis: Evidence from the COVID‐19 crisis in China

Effects of local government social media use on citizen compliance during a crisis: Evidence from the COVID‐19 crisis in China

Social Media News Use and COVID-19 Misinformation Engagement: Survey Study

What Does it Mean for a Language Model to Preserve Privacy?

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