Challenging Official Propaganda? Public Opinion Leaders on Sina Weibo.

This article examines the prominence of various user categories as opinion leaders, defined as initiators, agenda setters or disseminators, in 29 corruption cases exposed on SinaWeibo. It finds that ordinary citizens made up the largest category of initiators but that their power of opinion leadership was limited as they had to rely on media organizations to spread news about the cases. News organizations and online media were the main opinion leaders. Government and Party bodies initiated a fair number of cases and, despite not being strong agenda setters or disseminators, were able to dominate public opinion owing to the fact that news organizations and online media mainly published official announcements about the cases. Media organizations also played a secondary role as the voice of the people. While individuals from some other user categories were able to become prominent opinion leaders, news workers are likely to be the most promising user category to challenge official propaganda.Faculty Research Support Scheme of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney. University of Hong Kong Seed Funding Program for Basic Research and the General Research Fund, Research Grants Council, Hong Kong (Project Code: 17402314)

Who sets the news agenda on “Chinese Twitter”? The relationships between the media and opinion leaders on Weibo

Within the theoretical framework of agenda setting, this dissertation used granger causality analysis to examine the relationships between news agendas of the media outlets and opinion leaders on one Chinese social network platform—Weibo. It also utilized network analysis to compare agenda-setting effects between the media outlets and opinion leaders in crisis and non-crisis news. The study not only applied agenda setting to Chinese social media, but it also approached the agenda-setting effects of social media from a completely different perspective, recognizing and differentiating the segmented agendas on social media platforms. It examined more nuanced agenda-setting effects among the most influential groups on social media platforms, determining and comparing the news agendas of these groups. The results showed agenda-setting effects exist only between the opinion leaders and commercial media outlets rather than the official media in China. Although journalists and celebrities tended to be the most influential ones on Twitter, business elites were the most influential opinion leader on Weibo. Furthermore, the agenda-setting process among these opinion leaders changed in crisis and non-crisis news.Journalis

Assessing Censorship on Microblogs in China: Discriminatory Keyword Analysis and the Real-Name Registration Policy

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Engaging stakeholders through Facebook. The case of Global Compact LEAD participants

Facebook has deeply modified the way people communicate and interact. From a business perspective, Facebook has enormous potential as a means of communication and stakeholder engagement. It enables companies to share contents rapidly and efficiently with a large number of stakeholders worldwide. People can personalise their Facebook profile to receive updates from selected companies. Moreover, people can reply to such posts or simply manifest their approval by liking or sharing the posts. In this way, people also propagate corporate information among their own friends. The dramatic diffusion of Facebook should encourage companies to virtually interact with a network of stakeholders 2.0, using Facebook as a stakeholder engagement tool. The evolution to Web 2.0 goes with a general change in the social and business environment. In today’s world, both policy makers and the public expect that companies work in a sustainable way and consult their stakeholders about corporate strategies, operations and performance. The discussion should concern social and ecological cares as well as economic issues. In this sense, the engagement of the Facebook community could considerable enlarge and improve the dialogue. This paper offers a theoretical and empirical analysis to answer the following research question: do sustainability-oriented companies use Facebook as an effective means of stakeholder engagement? The paper contains an investigation based on UN Global Compact LEAD members, characterised by strong commitment and cooperation with governments, civil society, labour and the UN in order to promote sustainable practices. To evaluate the contribution of Facebook to the dialogue on sustainability, the investigation considered the types of contents published by the LEAD companies on their Facebook pages in 30 days. According to the subject, seven categories of posts emerged from the analysis: human rights and social citizenship; labour; environment; anti-corruption; strategy, business activity and economic performance; news on products and services; other. To evaluate the use of Facebook for stakeholder engagement 2.0, the investigation verified how many “likes”, comments and “shares” each post received and how often the company replied. The analysis showed that some LEAD members did not have a Facebook profile, which is unacceptable nowadays. Moreover, the companies with an official page rarely covered all three perspectives of sustainability (social, environmental, and economic issues). Furthermore, companies rarely replied to stakeholders’ comments. Based on the empirical evidence, most LEAD participants should modify the way they used Facebook. Therefore, the results of this research may help them improve stakeholder engagement 2.0

Net-Activism on Twitter: McDonald’s and Coca Cola @Expo2015

In recent years political participations and political consumerism have highlighted the ethical and responsible side of consumptions practices. Internet at large and social media have increased the likelihood of engaging in political consumerism. According to previous researches, among social networking sites, Twitter is more focused on the sharing of opinions and information, thus is more likely to be used as a mean to debate about political consumerism. The paper presents the results of a qualitative analysis conducted on Twitter posts. The aim was to analyze Italian consumer reactions to the news concerning McDonald’s and Coca-Cola official sponsorship of Expo 2015

The influence of social media in Vietnam's elite politics

There has been a notable rise of social media in Vietnam’s politics in recent years. The use of social media in generating and exchanging content for public consumption has become increasingly complex and sophisticated. The development of social media has led to the public being better informed about key political and economic issues of public concern. Social media is also playing a visible role in the competition among political factions. Increased exposure and public scrutiny has had a great impact on the way the political apparatus operates and the closed-door preparations made by party-state elites to select top leadership. This paper examines the patterns of use of social media and highlights some of its prominent features and roles in Vietnam's politics. I investigate the impact that social media exerts, as well as the constraints on its use for the public

Twitter Sentiment and Statement Reality Analysis Considering Pre-Current and Post Event Tweets

As we know that twitter is one of the main internet applications which have pulled many internet users into messaging, sharing tweets etc. The day to day increase of internet usage by the means of Desktop�s, Laptops, and Smartphone�s etc. which made following, follows and favorites hit count to a maximum extent. This has given many un-ethnic users an advantage on making a message or an event to hype, or fake so as to make business or an event a profitable economically or on monetarily. This makes a user or viewers a frustration on the belief. To decrease such activities and increase the reliability and belief a Tweet/ Event Reality Analysis has to be imposed by Considering Tweet Sentiment on Pre-Current and Post Event Tweets based on Event Date. In this paper, we focus on the Tweet Sentiment and Statement Reality Analysis by Pre-Current and Post Event Tweets based on the event Date. The tweet sentiments have to be categorized based on the sentiment and sub categorized on whether the tweet was before the Event date, or on Current Date and or on Post Event Date, which gives the Reality Analysis of the Tweeted Statement without affecting the tweet sentiment

Sina Weibo and its political implications: a case study of the Zhou Yongkang incident

After the Chinese government blocked Facebook in 2008 and Twitter in 2009 in mainland China, perspicacious Chinese Internet service providers have invented alternative social media platforms. Sina Weibo is one of them. Scholars studying the Internet and social media in Western countries have suggested that social media have the potential to construct a unique online public sphere and contribute to a much deeper social change. However, social media and its social and political implications in such a populous developing country with 710 million Internet users have not been thoroughly addressed due to the linguistic estrangement and the firm historical association of the new communication technology with democratic discourse. Furthermore, among the literature studying Chinese Internet, there is a lack of empirical research. The number of studies that look directly into the Chinese social media content is still relatively small. Therefore, this study is an effort to fill this gap through an empirical case study to map out the distinct dynamics in China’s online public sphere facilitated by Sina Weibo. This thesis strives to examine Weibo’s role in facilitating public discussion and constructing an online public sphere in China. To this end, it analyses Sina Weibo users’ discussion about the Zhou Yongkang incident. The theoretical framework applied in this study originates from Habermas’s conception of the public sphere and Warner’s notion of publics. Since these theories formed in Anglophone context, this study focuses on extrapolating the theories into Chinese context. This study uses mixed research methods. It uses both quantitative content analysis and qualitative critical discourse analysis. A wide range of political, social and historical perspectives are also employed to explore the diverse discourse and dynamic interaction on Weibo. Drawing from the public discussion in Zhou’s case, the thesis paints a relatively promising picture of the social media as a platform for personal expression in public discussion on political issues, comparatively jumping out of the discourse agenda set by the government and state media. The interaction among users indicates that rational-critical debate has become a part of China’s online public sphere

Hot Topic Discovery in Online Community using Topic Labels and Hot Features

With huge volumes of information on Internet, how to extract user-concerned hot topics quickly and effectively has become a fundamental task for information processing on Internet. Generally, hot topic detection includes two tasks, the first one is topic discovery and the other is its hotness evaluation. In this paper, we propose a hot topic detection method. For topic discovery, topics are identified by clustering based on extracted topic labels. For hotness evaluation, the proposed model has fully considered the internal and external dual features and combined them together. The experimental results over TianYa BBS demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method: compared with topic discovery based on latent semantic indexing, the improved vector space model based on topic labels gets better results and the identified topics are more accurate. Moreover, the proposed hotness features could reflect the popularity of a topic, and hence have obtained better hot topic results finally