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Abstract
This article, based on a computer-assisted analysis of Weibo communications about two recent ‘mass incidents’ in China, offers a model for understanding online communication's influence on government legitimacy. This study explores the discourse of Weibo discussions on social protests and what impacts this discourse may have on the legitimacy of Chinese government in the digital environment. The Weibo discourses on the two mass incidents suggest two modes of online communication: one-way communication, where local residents have taken the initiative and two-way communication, initiated by both local residents and national elites. Different themes the discourses have touched suggest different types and levels of impacts Weibo discussions have on government legitimacy. More precisely, the discourse in which there is a critique of the current national political system in China is more challenging to government legitimacy than the one in which there are only demands for local changes. The online discourse about the Haimen incident on Weibo even can be seen as reinforcing government legitimacy. Therefore, the impact of online communication on government legitimacy is relative and depends on specific cases. To understand the power of online communication requires us to analyse the nature of online discourses about specific cases and then examine them within external social and political contexts and by comparing them with one another. Contextual dynamics such as social problems and tensions can function as an indicator for understanding the type and level of impact of online communication on government legitimacy.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the guest editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
Notes on contributors
Jingrong Tong is Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. Her research is on the relationship between news/new media and society, with a current focus on online communication analysis, environmental investigative journalism and how new media technologies shape news media and journalism. Her recent publications include articles on transformation of journalism and newspapers, investigative journalism, self-censorship, and the media-government relationship in China. She is the author of Investigative Journalism in China: Journalism, Power, and Society (Continuum 2011 and 2012). [email: [email protected]]
Landong Zuo is IT Consultant and Data Scientist specialized in data mining and Nature Language Processing. His research interest includes data integration, analysis and visualization in the fields of Semantic Web, Linked Data and Big Data. [email: [email protected]]
Notes
1. The Wukan incident refers to a series of demonstrations and petitions which villagers in Wukan, in Guangdong province, made from September to December 2011. They were unhappy principally because of seizures of village land by corrupt local officials for sale to developers without proper compensation to the villagers. In December 2011, Xue Jinbo, a village representative, died in custody two days after his arrest. His death led to a severe confrontation between Wukan villagers and local police. The Guangdong province later showed a supportive attitude towards the Wukan villagers and assigned a working team to investigate local land and election issues on 20 December 2011. In February and March 2012, Wukan villagers elected their own village government. The Haimen incident, also in Guangdong province, started with an appeal letter published on a web forum. It revealed that despite the dramatic pollution the first coal-fired electricity plant had caused there, Haimen's local government had decided to open a second plant of this kind. This letter aroused residents' fury over the local government's decision (Shangguan, Citation2011). A message mobilizing local residents to ‘protest in front of the Town government and take collective action’ was reposted by many Weibo users (Zhang, Citation2011). Thousands of local residents, many of whom were young people, including even teenagers, held protests from 20 to 23 December 2011.
2. Retrieved May 2, 2013, from http://www.cnnic.cn/hlwfzyj/hlwxzbg/hlwtjbg/201301/P020130122600399530412.pdf.
3. Ten of thousands of protesters clashed with police who had allegedly covered up a girl's death in the Guizhou province.
4. Censorship is identifiable in the data collection process and proved by other scholars such as Elmer (Citation2012). For example, during some time periods, no searching results turned up because the key words were filtered and censored. However, after one or two days, we were able to have search results by using the same key words and the results were posted during the periods of time that we failed to get these results.
5. Both are computer programming languages.
6. After several tests, 100 is considered as being appropriate for detailed analysis and interpretation.
7. The types of users are judged by information published on their Weibo profiles and messages. Most of Internet users included information about their occupations and origin in their profiles. For some of them who did not reveal their background information, we judged their types by reading their message posted on Weibo.
8. Elites include cultural and economic elites such as journalists, university academics, lawyers and CEOs. No political elites such as politicians have been recognized.
9. Cluster tables are all adapted from dendrograms. Some types of keywords such as conjunctions and particles have been removed from the clusters.
10. With a title of ‘Zhen Renhao, the Shantou Mayer, talked about the Haimen incident: have to arrest some people’.