The social-mediated crisis communication research: Revisiting dialogue between organizations and publics in crises of China

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThe rapid diffusion of social media is ushering in a new era of crisis communication. To enhance our understanding of the social-mediated dialogue between organizations and their publics in crises of China, this study conducts a content analysis of 61 relevant journal articles published in 2006-2018. Results of this research present an overview of ongoing research trends such as theoretical frameworks and methodological preferences. This research also explores how the unique Chinese social media characteristics affect the dialogue between types of organizations and their publics. Contextual factors such as face and favor, relationship (Guanxi) and sentiment (Renqing), and the centralized political system that may facilitate/inhibit dialogue in crises of China are identified as well. Finally, this study suggests promising new directions such as a scholarly assessment tool for the social-mediated crisis communication research in China.

AI‐Powered mental health chatbots: Examining users’ motivations, active communicative action and engagement after mass‐shooting disasters

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Online Discourse in the Context of COVID-19, the First Health Crisis in China after the Advent of Mobile Social Media: A Content Analysis of China’s Weibo and Baidu

“…In China, numerous public emergencies have been alerted through social networks due to their dissemination capacity, such as the SARS crises in 2003, the Chinese Red Cross in 2011, the Hepatitis B vaccine scandal in 2013, and the Ebola crisis in 2014-15, during which the degree of disinformation was still very low in China, specifically in Weibo (Fung et al 2016). Despite the fact that government control still served to inhibit conversations (Xie et al 2016), either by blocking sensitive words and social media accounts or filtering emoticons (Cairns and Carlson 2016), research identified that social networks promoted more active participation of Chinese citizens (Romenti et al 2014) as a consequence of the transformation of the Chinese government from censorship to oversight, and that now guided conversations rather than fully controlling them (Xie et al 2016;Cheng 2020).…”