Focus event research results.

The attitude of the Chinese government towards social organizations (SOs) is crucial, as it affects the management rule and development tendency of SOs. To research the rule of SOs’ participation in social governance in China, this study used a new historical perspective, the institutional development perspective, to conduct its exploration. This perspective provides an accurate measure of the reality of the SOs’ participation, as it involves a mixed research methodology using continuous data from 73 years of reports and content mining, as well as topic clustering analysis to reveal a macroscopic and multi-line picture. Using a co-word analysis of hundreds of reports, from 1949–2021, in the People’s Daily, an official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, this study quantified changes in intensity, emotion, and content regarding social organization participation in social governance through topic distribution. Three trends were revealed: (1) “social-oriented character” and “organized-oriented character” were identified during the change in SOs; (2) the extent of being managed gradually strengthened and shifted from the Communist Youth League of China to the Community Party of China; (3) the goals of SOs shifted from general to innovated function in special charitable organizations. The institutional development perspective can complement the focus event perspective, including a new method, co-word analysis, to examine official Chinese media and validate the Administrative Absorption of Society (AAS) theory by identifying two lines of topic clustering trends. The attention distribution analysis in official media from an institutional development perspective can help explore the role of official media reports in analyzing the allocation of national attention and provide new analytical methods for big data mining to establish the social and organizational natures of SOs to optimize their roles. It offers a basis for modern social governance policy innovation in China.</div

Research framework.

The attitude of the Chinese government towards social organizations (SOs) is crucial, as it affects the management rule and development tendency of SOs. To research the rule of SOs’ participation in social governance in China, this study used a new historical perspective, the institutional development perspective, to conduct its exploration. This perspective provides an accurate measure of the reality of the SOs’ participation, as it involves a mixed research methodology using continuous data from 73 years of reports and content mining, as well as topic clustering analysis to reveal a macroscopic and multi-line picture. Using a co-word analysis of hundreds of reports, from 1949–2021, in the People’s Daily, an official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, this study quantified changes in intensity, emotion, and content regarding social organization participation in social governance through topic distribution. Three trends were revealed: (1) “social-oriented character” and “organized-oriented character” were identified during the change in SOs; (2) the extent of being managed gradually strengthened and shifted from the Communist Youth League of China to the Community Party of China; (3) the goals of SOs shifted from general to innovated function in special charitable organizations. The institutional development perspective can complement the focus event perspective, including a new method, co-word analysis, to examine official Chinese media and validate the Administrative Absorption of Society (AAS) theory by identifying two lines of topic clustering trends. The attention distribution analysis in official media from an institutional development perspective can help explore the role of official media reports in analyzing the allocation of national attention and provide new analytical methods for big data mining to establish the social and organizational natures of SOs to optimize their roles. It offers a basis for modern social governance policy innovation in China.</div

Statistics of high-frequency words in Chinese social organizations from 2012 to 2021.

Statistics of high-frequency words in Chinese social organizations from 2012 to 2021.</p

Cluster analysis atlas of high-frequency words from 2012–2021.

Cluster analysis atlas of high-frequency words from 2012–2021.</p

Cluster analysis atlas of high-frequency words from 1949 to 1981.

Cluster analysis atlas of high-frequency words from 1949 to 1981.</p

Cluster analysis atlas of high-frequency words from 2004–2011.

Cluster analysis atlas of high-frequency words from 2004–2011.</p

Theoretical contribution of using institution development to observe the history of social organizations in the official media.

Theoretical contribution of using institution development to observe the history of social organizations in the official media.</p

Changing attention distribution of social organizations participating in social governance.

Changing attention distribution of social organizations participating in social governance.</p

Emotional tendency reported by social organizations in the People’s Daily.

Positive emotion assignment value of +2. Negative affective assignment of -2. Mixed emotion assignment of -1.</p

Statistics of high-frequency words developed in Chinese social organizations from 1949 to 1981.

Statistics of high-frequency words developed in Chinese social organizations from 1949 to 1981.</p