Dynamic preference revelation and expression of personal frames: how Weibo is used in an anti-nuclear protest in China

Abstract

This study explores the use of Weibo in a protest against a nuclear fuel processing plant in China. This study argues that social media play an important role in the development of protests in non-democratic societies through the mechanism of preference revelation, which blurs the boundary between offline protests and the individualized expression of preferences on social media. Of Weibo tweets which were posted prior to the occurrence of the offline protest, 11,788 protest-related were examined with the aid of a supervised machine learning technique. The results showed that the revelation of personal preferences in the form of individualized expressions of opposition were more common than mobilization and coordination, and such preferences were legitimized by the personal frames of risk and the distrust in government. The use of Weibo to mobilize potential opponents to the project, primarily by calling for the expression of opposition, was less frequent than the use of Weibo to express personal frames. Furthermore, the prevalence of Weibo usage changed dramatically. In the first few days of the protest, the revelation of personal preferences and personal frames of risk were prominent, whereas personal frames of distrust in government were common in the days leading to the street protest.

Keywords:

• preference revelation
• personal frames
• Weibo
• protest
• China

Acknowledgements

An early draft was presented at Lund University’s workshop on “Towards a Green China? Government Policies and Citizen Engagement.” The first author would like to thank Professor Marina Svensson for her invitation and valuable comments.

Notes

1. Theocharis et al.’s (2015) typology is useful although it conflates interactive discussions with statements of political texture under the umbrella of conversational use. This study contends that conversation is a form of communication between two parties, and thus conversational use should be confined to interactive discussion with specific audiences. Because the statement of political texture reveals the causes underpinning a protest, its content needs to be contextually analyzed.

2. The concept of personal action frames is used in relation to collective action frames. This conceptual pairing is associated with the social movement scholarship, and it has limited association with the concepts of media frames and individual frames used in the media research literature (Scheufele, 1999).

3. This study does not include “expression of preference to participate in offline protest” as the defining element of “personal preference revelation” because expressions of participation in offline protests are politically sensitive, and Weibo users tend to avoid them. The preliminary examination of Weibo tweets confirmed that only a few expressed the preference to participate in offline protests.

4. http://www.takungpao.com/news/content/2012-11/13/content_1374496.htm (accessed 19 October 2014).

5. http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/readme-Software-Automated-Content-Analysis (accessed 19 October 2014).

6. http://shipei.qq.com/c/gd/20130711004853 (accessed 22 June 2015).

7. As the controversy developed, an increasing number of Weibo users engaged in online expression and discussion, which was indicated by the volume of tweeting (Figure 1); moreover, the topics became more diffused. This finding partially explains the decrease in the prevalence of Weibo uses. Thus, we paid special attention to the relative prevalence in interpreting the results shown in Figure 2.

8. Details are provided at http://ww4.sinaimg.cn/bmiddle/3f88a35ajw1e6gxfi1ba5j20c83fg7q4.jpg, (accessed 25 June 2015).