The Use of Social Media by Chinese Climate Journalists: A Case Study of COP21

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to probe into the social media use by Chinese climate journalists through the examination of their professional practices on social media. Taking COP21 as a case, the study conducted a survey from Chinese COP21 journalists and analyzed WeChat and Weibo posts from Chinese journalists and tweets from their UK and US colleagues. The results show the prevalent use of WeChat among Chinese journalists and the personalization of the social media content accordingly. Compared to their Western counterparts, the use of social media for professional purposes by Chinese COP21 journalists was relatively limited. Nevertheless, several patterns of using social media were identified. Specifically, Chinese journalists tended to more frequently express personal opinions, discuss work experience and favor conventional news sources of authority than UK and US journalists. The results also suggest that climate change in Chinese media discourse will remain more a policy-related issue instead of an environmental or scientific issue, with Chinese government playing a central role.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese journalism
• climate change
• COP21
• social media
• Twitter
• WeChat
• Weibo

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.