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The emergence of the Internet and social media provides a new platform for information diffusion, promoting the interaction among relatively independent participants in the opinion market and changing the balance of the intrinsic mechanism and external dynamics based on political communication. In this way, it is necessary to investigate the new interactive landscape of political communication and political discourse regarding digital media. In this study, we conduct a social and semantic network analysis of the dissemination and public opinion generation landscape of the COVID-19 "New Ten Articles" policy communication by the Chinese government, exploring the network relationships and emotional value interactions behind the contact of a new public policy in China. The results show that, in the political communication system, the influence of information's position in the communication field has surpassed the information source impact, and the power of network opinion leaders is significant; the policy communication network presents a situation of "identity status circle" division, and the information circle connection presents a trend of fracture and barrier thickening, which may cause policy information alienation and social opinion polarization risk; the imbalance between policy information supply and public demand is further enhanced, and the negative emotion "cloud" is distributed on a scale and condenses into grassroots social governance pressure; and the content released by some key opinion leaders, experts, online media, and local mainstream media accounts is significantly correlated with network emotions. These emotions continue to spread in subsequent discussions, and to some extent, influence the formation process of political public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the smartphone, the production and circulation of digital visual media have become as costless and accessible as audio and text-based communication. It would be challenging to be a contemporary ethnographer without engaging with digital practices which in Japan and China at least, tend towards being highly visual. Digital visual communication is recognised in literature as an effective and accessible form of communication, with an increasing number of studies in the field of digital anthropology, media studies and Internet studies exploring the consequences of digital images on social media. There is a pressing need to understand local forms of visual communication in the digital age, where the visual has become an essential part of daily communication. This article deals particularly with the rise of visual digital communication among older adults in China and Japan. Drawing on 16-month ethnographies conducted simultaneously between 2018 and 2019 in China and Japan, this article contributes to the discussion of visual communication in light of this semiotic shift happening online, which is then contextualised within people's offline lives. The ethnographies in both China and Japan find that, first of all, visual communication via digital media enables more effective and efficient phatic communication and emotion work. In addition, the ethnographies point to a question about 'authenticity' in interpersonal communication. The ethnographies show that in some cases, the deployment of visual communication via the smartphone is not so much about being able to express 'authentic' personal feelings but rather, in being able to effectively establish a digital public façade according to social norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the formation of popular music idol industries in China and the emergence of data fandom. It charts the growth of digital platforms and historicizes the commercial and geopolitical itinerations linking cultural production in Japan, South Korea, and China. It locates data fandom as an integral part of the popular music industries reconfigured by digital social media platforms; a structural change from the production-to-consumption 'supply chain' model of the recording era towards emergent circuits of content that integrate industries and audiences. Data fans understand how their online activities are tracked, and adopt individual and collective strategies to influence metric and semantic information reported on digital platforms and social media. This article analyses how the practices of data fans impact upon charts, media and content traffic, illustrating how this activity benefits the idols they are following, and enhances a fan's sense of achievement and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The primary objectives of the article are to systematically investigate the effects of differentiated functions of WeChat use (social use and recreational use) on university students' online self-presentation, social support and sense of belonging. Design/methodology/approach: The data were collected from a web-based survey on a sample of 485 university students in mainland China. Correlation analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM) were implemented to address the corresponding hypotheses. Findings: The results demonstrate that the social use of WeChat is positively related to online self-presentation, whereas recreational use is unrelated to such behavior. Additionally, the findings verify that online self-presentation is a significant predictor of both social support and sense of belonging. Furthermore, online self-presentation could mediate the influence of social use of WeChat on social support and sense of belonging. Research limitations/implications: Theoretically, the study represents an initial effort to elucidate the joint impact of differentiated functions of WeChat use and online self-presentation on social support and sense of belonging. Practically, these findings identify the crucial mediation role of online self-presentation in assisting individuals to acquire social support and promote sense of belonging. Originality/value: Although mobile social media has brought dramatic revolutions in interaction and interpersonal behaviors, the empirically studies regarding the potential influences of its utilization are equivocal. These outcomes may shed meaningful light on the comprehending of unique characteristics of WeChat communication and how it could impact people's psychosocial development in the digital era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prolific rise of Chinese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for advancing social and political change has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Nonetheless, limited communication studies research has been conducted to further contemporary understanding of these emerging collectives, particularly beyond the popular hype of digital and social media-led “revolutions” in civic engagement or dystopian accounts of Chinese society. This paper reviews the key contours of communication scholarship on Chinese NGOs and highlights the major contributions of the articles in this special issue. We also propose three dialectical tensions to stimulate future research in mediated Chinese NGO organizing, and to help advance the communicative purposes, practices and prospects of Chinese NGOs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although a considerable body of research has examined the use of digital media communication by Chinese NGOs, no attention has been paid to whether and how NGOs in China evaluate the results of their efforts in digital communication. This study explores the perceptions and practices of individuals who work for NGOs in China with specific regard to the evaluation of their digital media tools. The study also considers the influence of government and both foreign and domestic donors on the digital media use and evaluation capacity of NGOs. The analysis of data collected through interviews with NGO staff in Shanghai and Beijing demonstrated that Chinese NGOs, although they rely on digital media to publicize events, broadcast accomplishments, and deliver services, are less expert in and ascribe relatively less value to the evaluation of their digital communication. The findings of the study suggest that the attention to and organizational capacity for evaluation are influenced by relationships with foreign donors. Based on these findings, it is recommended that Chinese NGOs develop the capacity to measure the offline consequences of their online activity if they are to continue to develop their organizations and demonstrate outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The advent of online media, and particularly social media, has led to scholarly debates about their implications. Authoritarian countries are interesting in this respect because social media might facilitate open and critical debates that are not possible in traditional media. China is arguably the most relevant and interesting case in this respect, because it limits the influx of non-domestic social media communication, has established its own microcosm of social media and tries to closely monitor and control it and censor problematic content. While such censorship is very effective in some instances, however, it fails to shut down all open debates completely. We analyse the pre-eminent Chinese social media platform – Sina Weibo – and present a typology of different kinds of public spheres that exist on this platform in which open and critical debates can occur under specific circumstances: Thematic public spheres include phenomena of common concern, such as environmental pollution or food safety; short-term public spheres emerge after unexpected events; encoded public spheres are deliberate attempts of users to circumvent censorship; local public spheres focus on sub-national phenomena and problems; non-domestic political public spheres exist on political topics from other countries but are often referenced back to China; mobile public spheres exist because many people use Weibo on their smartphones and also have access to deleted content there and meta public spheres are debates about censorship itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's weibo community numbered more than 300 million users in 2013. This article assesses the rise and influence of microblogs from political, social, and commercial aspects. It examines ways the Chinese government has controlled microblogs, considers newer competing forms of communication, and assesses trends in Chinese digital discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]