Networked framing between source posts and their reposts: an analysis of public opinion on China's microblogs

ABSTRACT

Retweeting a post on a social media platform is a part of a process of growing significance through which public opinion formation takes place. A ‘retweet count’ on, say Twitter or weibo, can be taken as a measure of user influence. The assumption is that when B retweets A's message, B empathizes with A and wishes to disseminate the message more widely. But this assumption has hardly been tested and preliminary evidence suggests practices for retweeting on Twitter vary. Nor can retweeting practices on Twitter be assumed to apply on weibo. This paper makes the first effort to understand the practice of reposting on China's weibo, focusing on the content of reposts in comparison to that of the original messages. A quantitative comparison is made of the frame [Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58; Gamson, W. A., & Modigliani, A. (1989). Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: A constructionist approach. American Journal of Sociology, 95, 1–37] of the source post of 21 cases, and their reposts. The posts and reposts all refer to the issue of officials being exposed for corruption on Sina Weibo. The study finds sound evidence of networked framing, in which reposters revised frames of the source posters while disseminating them. Although over half of the reposts merely republished the source post without added content, what emerged were new communicative functions, case definitions, and a diagnosis of the consequences of exposing the cases. However, different types of user accounts drew different reposting frames, which points to a consistent paradigm between the source accounts and the reposters. The results are important for understanding the mechanisms behind the formation of public opinion on weibo.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• framing
• public opinion
• retweet
• social media
• Twitter
• weibo

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Joyce Y. M. Nip is a senior lecturer in the University of Sydney. Before joining the academia, she was a journalist. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park in the US (2004–2005), and visiting associate professor at the University of Hong Kong (2013–2014). Joyce is a member of the editorial boards of Journalism Practice and Digital Journalism. [email: [email protected]]

King-wa Fu is an associate professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong. His research interest includes new media and political participation, computational social sciences, health communication, and young people's Internet use. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1. Categorization was made on the basis of the description given on each of the account's home page on Sina Weibo. News organizations, the Sina Headline News, and Government/Party bodies are verified accounts whose offline identity has been confirmed by the Sina Weibo service provider as corresponding to their online description.

The Sina Headline News was among the most reposted accounts in the exposure of corruption cases on Sina Weibo (Nip & Fu, in press).

The ‘independent news’ category included news workers, independent media workers, online media workers, NGO workers, and one Hong Kong news organization. The decision to include the Hong Kong (an ex-British colony run under a different political system in China as a special administrative region) news organization under this category was based on the observation that its post was very different in content from those published by mainland China's news organizations but more like those published by individual news/media workers.

2. The number of captured reposts for the source posts published by Government/Party bodies were, respectively, 701, 293, 29, 21, 10; for News organizations/online media were 3267, 1163, 880, 873, 851, 772, 450, 444; for Independent News were 6778, 2927, 1533, 496, and for Others were 695, 439, 85, 12.

3. PRC/CCP institution/rule refers to the entire system, in contrast to ‘an organization’, which refers to an official agency.

Additional information

Funding

Joyce Y. M. Nip's research was supported by the Faculty Research Support Scheme of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney. King-wa Fu's study was supported by the General Research Fund, Research Grants Council, Hong Kong (HKU 17402314H).