“To follow and to be followed” has become the new normal in news communication in the age of social media. News audience follow news via social media while they are being followed by news anytime anywhere. This new normal has created a pressing need to investigate whether social media have brought any changes to both party-controlled and market-oriented news media in China in reporting crises. Comparing Xinhua News Agency (party-controlled) and The Paper (market-oriented), this study investigated how they reported COVID-19 and how their news consumers engaged with their COVID-19 news stories on Jinri Toutiao, a popular and yet special form of social media. This study found that Xinhua News Agency continued to stay overwhelmingly positive, while The Paper was more neutral in reporting the health crisis. Xinhua News Agency was surprisingly more episodic than The Paper in framing the pandemic. The Paper, however, had a higher level of user engagement than Xinhua News Agency. To cater to the changing news-seeking behaviors and patterns, both party-controlled and market-oriented news media have changed their operations, but not their fundamental orientations.

Recently, rapid advances in flexible strain sensors have broadened their application scenario in monitoring of various mechanophysiological signals. Among various strain sensors, the crack-based strain sensors have drawn increasing attention in monitoring subtle mechanical deformation due to their high sensitivity. However, early generation and rapid propagation of cracks in the conductive sensing layer result in a narrow working range, limiting their application in monitoring large biomechanical signals. Herein, we developed a stress-deconcentrated ultrasensitive strain (SDUS) sensor with ultrahigh sensitivity (gauge factor up to 2.3 × 10 6 ) and a wide working range (0%-50%) via incorporating notch-insensitive elastic substrate and microcrack-tunable conductive layer. Furthermore, the highly elastic amine-based polymer-modified polydimethylsiloxane substrate without obvious hysteresis endows our SDUS sensor with a rapid response time (2.33 ms) to external stimuli. The accurate detection of the radial pulse, joint motion, and vocal cord vibration proves the capability of SDUS sensor for healthcare monitoring and human-machine communications.

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This study examines the relationship between writing self-efficacy, attribution, and writing proficiency of college students in learning English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The scales of writing self-efficacy and attribution were administered to 142 Chinese first-grade non-English majors. Research findings showed that these EFL learners maintained a medium level of writing self-efficacy and tended to attribute their writing outcomes to internal causes. Independent sample t-test indicated that gender exerted no significant influence on EFL writing self-efficacy, and only the attribution cause luck significantly differed between boys and girls. Besides, high-achievers reported stronger writing self-efficacy and skill self-efficacy, while no significant difference in task self-efficacy was found between high-achievers and low-achievers. One-way ANOVA results revealed that regardless of writing level, students tended to attribute their writing success or failure to internal factors such as ability and effort, while low-achievers were also inclined to attribute externally. Pedagogical implications were also discussed.