Visual Social Media and Vernacular Responses to Environmental Issues in China

This thesis investigates the role of visual social media in providing ordinary Chinese with an alternative space to articulate their opinions on environmental issues. By studying three notable environmental cases, this thesis explores how ordinary Chinese adopt visual social media practices as a response to environmental issues, and to aid in the fight for environmental justice. This thesis provides a new perspective to understand China’s visual social media practices and its networked civic engagement

The Micro Communication Mechanism and Characteristics of Health Rumors among the Elderly Group——Take WeChat Official Account as an Example

The high-frequency spread of health rumors among the elderly in the WeChat field has become a prominent social problem. In order to better control rumor, it is necessary to clarify its micro dissemination mechanism. The paper relies on the MOA theoretical framework to clarify the motivational factors, opportunity factors, and ability factors of the spread of health rumors among the elderly people, and uses interview methods to study the micro dissemination mechanism of health rumors. Research has found that the spread of health rumors among elderly people mainly follows the path of “getting health rumors ? health rumors diffusing within peer groups ? health rumors overflowing from the circle of elderly people ? family members contained”, and forms a “Four Point Dissemination” mechanism that connects peer groups and primary groups, including origin, nodes, fulcrums, and endpoints. From the perspective of communication characteristics, the spread of health rumors has a strong closeness, inter-generational, and situational nature, presenting a double-layer communication structure that intersects within the circle and connects outside the circle, and has a prominent Pareto effect

Factors Affecting Users\u27 Dynamic Message Deleting Intention on Social Networks: An Empirical Study Based on Impression Management Theory

Social dynamics is a social networking service that allows users to input updates including letters, pictures, videos and share them with their social friends. Previous research mainly focus on the application of dynamic messages in the fields of communication science and economics. Based on impression management theory, this paper studies the influencing factors of users\u27 dynamic message deleting intention on social networks. The results show that impression management performance and social network fatigue significantly affect user\u27s intention to delete the dynamic messages. While message sender factors, such as self-monitoring, interpersonal interaction and image promotion; social platform factors such as information overload and social overload, indirectly influence the deleting intention through intermediary variables. This paper makes up for the lack of relevant empirical research, making users more social flexibility and effectiveness, thereby enhancing social validity, and have some practical implications for social networking services platforms

Study on the Influencing Factors of Health Information Sharing Behavior of the Elderly under the Background of Normalization of Pandemic Situation

This study aims to solve the problem of unwise judgment, decisions, and correspondingly dangerous behaviors caused by error health information to the elderly. Based on the MOA model and self-determination theory, this paper constructs a health information sharing model for the elderly and analyzes it with Amos\u27s structural equation model. The study finds that media richness, health information literacy, perceived benefits, and negative emotions of the coronavirus epidemic positively influence health information sharing behavior. In contrast, perceived risks have a significant negative impact on health information sharing behavior. At the same time, media richness positively affects health information literacy, perceived benefits, and negative emotions of the coronavirus epidemic but has no significant impact on perceived risks. Health literacy positively affects perceived benefits but does not significantly affect the perceived risks and negative emotions of the coronavirus epidemic. This study aims to assist government and online social platforms in taking relevant measures under the background of normalization of the pandemic situation, controlling the spread of error health information among the elderly, and guiding the elderly to share health information better

Post-MH370 Incident: A Comparative Study of Social Media Users' Perception in China and Malaysia

The flow of information experienced complexity uncertainty and ambiguity in terms of information adequacy when Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing. This incident demonstrated an unprecedented international humanitarian response from the technology sector. This study discovered that most respondents from Mainland China and Malaysia access information about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 during and after the tragic incident through social media. This study revealed significant difference of active social media users' perceptions on this incident in these two countries. On one hand, social networking sites such as Facebook (in Malaysia), Weibo and Wechat (in China), become the public opinion field that illustrates sorts of openness and negotiation in Malaysia and China. This study, instead of conventional crisis communication approach, specifically examined active online users in both countries, as it aims to make a valuable contribution by synthesizing current research and identifying areas for investigation for each aspect of the survey process. Two hundred questionnaires had been collected from respondents in China and Malaysia respectively. The survey results contributed to mechanism of crisis communication for henceforth similar incident in the future. There is no doubt that the portrait of Malaysia Airlines on social media in these two countries affected its organizational reputation. However, the participants from Malaysia and China showed a very average level of confidence to empower themselves to enhance dialog capacity among various stakeholders for this inciden

Friendly social surveillance

Chapter 3 seeks to frame Digital Kinship in terms of debates around the effects of media especially in terms of emotion, intimacy and surveillance. Bringing discussions around emotion and media by scholars, along with debates around social surveillance, mobility and transnationalism, this chapter considers the ways that different forms of mobility (chosen and enforced) are recalibrating familial ties

The Transformation of Trust in China’s Alternative Food Networks: Disruption, Reconstruction, and Development

Food safety issues in China have received much scholarly attention, yet few studies systematically examined this matter through the lens of trust. More importantly, little is known about the transformation of different types of trust in the dynamic process of food production, provision, and consumption. We consider trust as an evolving interdependent relationship between different actors. We used the Beijing County Fair, a prominent ecological farmers’ market in China, as an example to examine the transformation of trust in China’s alternative food networks. We argue that although there has been a disruption of institutional trust among the general public since 2008 when the melamine-tainted milk scandal broke out, reconstruction of individual trust and development of organizational trust have been observed, along with the emergence and increasing popularity of alternative food networks. Based on more than six months of fieldwork on the emerging ecological agriculture sector in 13 provinces across China as well as monitoring of online discussions and posts, we analyze how various social factors—including but not limited to direct and indirect reciprocity, information, endogenous institutions, and altruism—have simultaneously contributed to the transformation of trust in China’s alternative food networks. The findings not only complement current social theories of trust, but also highlight an important yet understudied phenomenon whereby informal social mechanisms have been partially substituting for formal institutions and gradually have been building trust against the backdrop of the food safety crisis in China