Research on Chinese social media users’ communication behaviors during public emergency events

In recent years, China has been in a period of social transition. Public emergency events have occurred frequently, and social media have developed rapidly. Social media users in China not only represent traditional audiences but also play an increasingly important role in crisis communication during public emergency events by expressing their views, discussing events with others and sharing information both online and offline. According to national telephone survey data from China, nearly two-thirds of the respondents engaged in communication behaviors during public emergency events, and more than forty percent of those users communicated by social media. Hundreds of millions of Chinese social media users are becoming the driving force of the public opinion field. To better understand social media users’ online information dissemination behaviors and influencing factors, we developed the hierarchical logistic regression model and observed that demographic variables (gender and age), social media use, people’s concerns regarding public emergencies and people’s need to monitor the government’s performance during public emergencies significantly influence online information dissemination behaviors. Our study has practical significance and academic value for understanding the online public opinion field and online political participation in China.     

Are female users equally active? An empirical study of the gender imbalance in Korean online news commenting

Because online news is pervasive and online comments provide space for people to express their opinions and participate in open discussions, they affect public opinion. However, at least in Korea, male users seem not only to be more active in consuming online news but also in commenting online. Many previous studies have investigated the gender imbalance in news consumption of not only traditional media but also online media. Although a few studies explored gender differences in online comments on news, no study has investigated such gender differences using actual data on the basic profiles of commenters. To fill the gap between previous studies and reality and address the gender imbalance in online news comments and public opinion, this study examined the differences between male and female online news commenters. Furthermore, using actual data provided by Naver, the dominant Internet portal in Korea, this study analyzed the characteristics of female news commenters and those of news content where female users most actively commented. This study found that—at least in Korea—fewer women comment on news, they are less active than men, and that there is a difference between younger and older women. This study also found that people write more comments in a day as their age increases and the gender differences decrease with age.     

美国互联网科普案例研究及对我国的启示

本文通过对美国互联网科普案例的分析研究,提出了基于互联网的科普不仅是技术工具的革新,而且从根本上改变了人类的科技传播理念和方式,使科学普及从传统的居高临下的单向传播,逐步变为公众与科学家的双向交流互动。公众不是被动地接受信息、而是主动地发现信息、选择信息、使用信息甚至去发布信息。互联网作为信息时代科普的重要平台,使得科技传播成为公众的共同事业,而不仅仅是少数人的职业。公众既是科技信息的接受者,又是科技信息的传播者。基于互联网的科普,能够给我国的科普事业带来"介入科技传播的人越来越多、介入欲望越来越强烈、介入能力越来越强大"的良性循环局面。本文还针对我国目前科普工作存在的问题特别是网络科普的现状,提出了开设"大规模开放式线上课程(MOOC-Massive Open Online Course)"、开设"虚拟实验室"、引进和开发科学游戏等具体实施方案,特别对科学游戏在青少年科普方面的作用做了较为详尽的论述。     

从公众参与科学视角看微博对科学传播的挑战

本文在探讨科学传播从缺失模型到公众参与模型变迁的基础上,阐述了以微博为代表的社交媒体的兴起给科学传播带来的挑战。本文在结合对转基因黄金大米引发的微博争端进行的实证研究与定性分析的基础上认为,微博等社交媒体具有潜力成为公众参与科学的平台,但又不是一个现成的公共领域(public sphere)。科学传播工作者需要正视这种情况,并尽可能充分利用社交媒体带来的条件,顺应科学传播向公众参与科学形态的变迁。     

基于大数据的社交媒体用户行为分析

随着技术的发展,数据信息化的优势越来越大,人们的生活与交流均离不开互联网信息,社交媒体成了人们生活必需品。网络媒介如电脑、移动终端等智能设备在不断优化自身的同时,为人们在网络世界与现实世界之间提供了相互的连接渠道,使人们在享受大数据营造的边界环境中实现了一定程度的自我呈现、身份转换等,开创了更多的社交可能。基于大数据的社交媒体用户行为,文中总结了当前网络用户的基本特征和使用现状,可以为社交媒体中的社会问题提供新的改进方向。     

Using new technologies for stimulating interpersonal communication on HIV and AIDS

Part of the current academic discourse on primary HIV and AIDS interventions, is focussed on the importance of interpersonal communication. Interpersonal communication is believed to mediate campaign effects through the creation of social learning environments. Therefore, many HIV and AIDS strategies (e.g. entertainment education programmes) use mass media channels for conveying messages on the one hand and spurring interpersonal communication among target groups on the other hand. However, it seems hard to find solid evidence that mass media campaigns are able to stimulate interpersonal communication. Simultaneously, there is a rising interest in the use of new technologies for HIV and AIDS prevention. As a result of their unique characteristics, such as interactivity and anonymity, they could be more appropriate than traditional channels to stimulate interpersonal communication. To gain insights in the challenges and opportunities of new technologies for primary HIV/AIDS prevention, this article presents the findings of a case study carried out at the University of the Western Cape. This study aimed at developing, implementing and evaluating an anonymous online discussion platform for students to share experiences and discuss sensitive subjects. The discussion forum was used in three ways: compulsory (through curriculum integration), semi-voluntarily and voluntarily. An extensive evaluation provided strong evidence that the online discussion forum was only successful when formally integrated into the curriculum. The most important opportunity of the formally integrated online forum relates to the creation of a social learning environment. The anonymous character of the online platform allayed fear for stigma and discrimination and removed cultural barriers concerning the inappropriateness of discussing HIV/AIDS related issues. As a result, the platform created a space in which students discussed freely, considered old and new ideas, acquired knowledge, and learned to esteem varying views on the subjects of discussion. Although no assertions can be made on the effects of these outcomes on sustainable changes in attitudes or behaviour, these findings indicate that participating in an anonymous online platform can instigate students to reflect on HIV/AIDS in a different way.     

The role of online news and social media in preventive action in times of infodemic from a social capital perspective: The case of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea

Infodemic, the spread of false information during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been raised as one of the major concerns aggravating the confusion in the global society. In this regard, the role of media as an information channel in delivering the reliable information and motivating the active participation of citizens in complying with government’s preventive actions becomes much more important. In this study, the role of online news and social media on people’s preventive actions considering the role of trust in citizens and government from the perspective of social capital is investigated. For the empirical study, a structural equation modeling is employed by using survey material gathered from South Korea in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. South Korea was selected as its COVID-19 prevention strategy focused not only on the provision of medical support, but also on the enhancement of social trust through active engagement with people through media channels. Our results reveal that the perceived characteristics of online news and social media influence preventive actions through the trust in citizens or in government. In addition, while online news media enhances trust in both the citizens and the government, social media only influences trust in citizens. Based on our findings, the role of media in preventing the spread of COVID-19 is dicussed.     

A new dimension of the digital divide: Exploring the relationship between broadband connection,smartphone use and communication competence

The study explores group differences in demographic characteristics; Internet usage (device ownership, Internet availability, and frequency of weekly Internet use); and communication competence (instrumental, creative, and networking skills) between people who have and who do not have wired and/or wireless broadband connections and smartphones. The results of the one-way ANOVA and Scheffe’s post-hoc comparisons demonstrate significant differences in groups with different network connection types across demographic lines, different levels of Internet usage, and different communication competences. The results of the multinomial regression show significant differences across the variables between wired-only users and wired and smartphone users as well as between wired-only users and wired, wireless, and smartphone users. However, group differences between wired and smartphone users and wired, wireless, and smartphone users are significant only in device ownership and creative skill. We concluded that smartphone use was likely to aggravate the gaps of demographics, access, and skills in the seamlessly connected media environment. Meanwhile, access gap made the most impact on information, communication, leisure/entertainment, and financial management activities online, followed by skill and demographic gaps. The findings imply that access and skill gaps could be higher barriers to the active engagement in diverse online activities and consequently create an overlapping effect on the established divide.     

User settings for advertising optimization on Facebook: Active customer participation or settings blindness?

Facebook and many other social media companies act on information markets with various player groups, which are differentiated by the kind of payment, one group paying with money (normally, advertisers) and the other group paying with their personal data or their attention (i.e., Facebook’s users being simultaneously the advertisers’ potential customers). In order to minimize users’ problems with (rather annoying) ads on digital services, some providers offer user settings for the optimization of advertising. We analyzed the information behavior of Facebook users concerning ad settings with the help of an online survey (N = 1,021). Only about 40% of participating Facebook users know about personalization of settings of their advertising preferences. More than 20% of the users who work with Facebook’s advertising optimization are satisfied since the changes, but 35% are unsatisfied, and another 32% have a generally negative attitude towards online advertising. To describe customers’ disregard or ignorance of settings we introduce the term “settings blindness.” Especially the users’ gender and their educational background influence the information behavior concerning advertisement settings. The results have practical implications for Facebook users (namely, setting their own preferences for ads and thus seeing only personally customized ads), for Facebook and other social media companies (producing less annoying ads leading to a better customer loyalty and maybe more trust in the service), and for advertisers on social media (improving the correct addressing of the target groups).     

The Dynamics of Audience Fragmentation: Public Attention in an Age of Digital Media

Audience fragmentation is often taken as evidence of social polarization. Yet the tools we use to study fragmentation provide limited information about how people allocate their attention across digital media. We offer a theoretical framework for understanding fragmentation and advocate for more audience‐centric studies. This approach is operationalized by applying network analysis metrics to Nielsen data on television and Internet use. We find extremely high levels of audience duplication across 236 media outlets, suggesting overlapping patterns of public attention rather than isolated groups of audience loyalists.     

A Bayesian network modeling approach for cross media analysis

Existing methods for the semantic analysis of multimedia, although effective for single-medium scenarios, are inherently flawed in cases where knowledge is spread over different media types. In this work we implement a cross media analysis scheme that takes advantage of both visual and textual information for detecting high-level concepts. The novel aspect of this scheme is the definition and use of a conceptual space where information originating from heterogeneous media types can be meaningfully combined and facilitate analysis decisions. More specifically, our contribution is on proposing a modeling approach for Bayesian Networks that defines this conceptual space and allows evidence originating from the domain knowledge, the application context and different content modalities to support or disproof a certain hypothesis. Using this scheme we have performed experiments on a set of 162 compound documents taken from the domain of car manufacturing industry and 118 581 video shots taken from the TRECVID2010 competition. The obtained results have shown that the proposed modeling approach exploits the complementary effect of evidence extracted across different media and delivers performance improvements compared to the single-medium cases. Moreover, by comparing the performance of the proposed approach with an approach using Support Vector Machines (SVM), we have verified that in a cross media setting the use of generative rather than discriminative models are more suited, mainly due to their ability to smoothly incorporate explicit knowledge and learn from a few examples.     

Exploring social and psychological factors that influence the gathering of political information online

Qualitative analysis of college students who searched online during the 2008 US presidential election contributes to three research areas: uses and gratifications, media credibility, and selective exposure. The findings identified new social factors that trigger motivations and psychological factors that affect patterns of media use for political information gathering. Word-of-mouth communication from strong, weak, and nonexistent social ties triggered social utility and information seeking motivations. Offline media contributed to online information seeking. Moderate credibility perceptions of media and weak party loyalty limited ideological selective exposure. Results add to research that links social and psychological factors to motivations and media use.     

增强在线直播课堂互动的教学模式探索

随着现代信息与通信技术的迅速发展,为了促进教育信息化,共享优质教育教学资源,在线教学直播课堂应运而生。在线教学直播课堂打破了教学的时空界限,较MOOC课程实时交互性更好,是一种新型的远程教育模式。论文针对在线直播课堂交互式教学模式展开研究,分析了在线直播课程的优势和其互动教学模式中的各个要素,提出增强在线直播课程互动教学模式的若干方法,并结合我校信息工程类专业在线直播课程开课情况进行了案例分析。本文旨在为在线直播课堂在实践中产生的问题提供参考借鉴,同时也丰富在线教育直播课堂建设的理论研究。     

Leadership going social: How U.S. nonprofit executives engage publics on Twitter

This study explored how nonprofit executives in the U.S. engaged with online publics through various communication strategies. We investigated the extent to which nonprofit executives leveraged 1) digital dialogic principles, 2) social presence strategies, and 3) message tactics. In addition, this study attempted to explore how different communication strategies influenced publics’ digital engagement with nonprofit leaders. We conducted a content analysis on 700 Twitter posts from 35 nonprofit executive leaders who possess an active Twitter presence and 195 public comments. These executives led America’s largest nonprofits across a wide range of religious, educational, scientific, sports, and social welfare organizations. The results showed that nonprofit executives employed some degree of the four dialogic principles and capitalized on each of the three types of social presence strategies evenly. Regarding message function, nonprofit executives were most active in disseminating information and creating an online community. Findings regarding the associations between communication strategies and public engagement remain mixed.     

The study of youth online: a critical review and agenda

The increasing and pervasive use of online technologies, especially social media, has inspired scholars to investigate how the Internet influences communication. As young people represent the fastest growing adopters of new online technology, much of this research targets youth activity online. But how is the communication discipline taking up this issue, broadly? Typically left to new media and computer-mediated communication scholars, we argue youth online activity raises new and exciting possibilities for researchers across the communication discipline. In this paper, we present a qualitative content analysis of communication research about youth and the Internet. Our analysis of over 700 journal articles provides a clear picture of past and present trends in communication research of youth online activity. Furthermore, we discuss the top four content themes, including: uses and gratifications, engagement, identity, and the uniqueness of youth experience. Critically, we articulate how such research organizes and positions youth in meaningful ways, paving the way for issues of inclusion. We call for a shift from a “difference” framework to one that more explicitly considers “complexity” before suggesting opportunities for future research that crosses and unites subdisciplinary boundaries.     

Online Competitions: An Open Space to Improve the Learning Process

Experimentation and practical work, which are usually accomplished in a laboratory, are the basics of technological fields. Laboratory activities enable students to acquire methodologies, work habits, knowledge, and experience of equipment operation, in conditions as near as possible to their future professional activities. The evolution of communication and information technologies opens new possibilities in educational methods. This article describes a project that aims to facilitate the use of real robots in an educational laboratory via Web, allowing users to learn different robotics aspects while performing a competition. Students can remotely program several robots to participate in games to accomplish a set of goals in a remote stadium (the RoboStadium). To facilitate the use of robots, the online robot stadium provides a set of training resources. Having these resources, previous knowledge on robotics is not required to use the system. Since robotics is a multidisciplinary field (mechanics, electronics, control, mathematics, computers, etc.), students of different degrees can take advantage of the presented system. Researchers of two Spanish universities are participating in this project, which provides robotics telelaboratories via Web.     

Paradox of richness: a cognitive model of media choice

Researchers have long studied the effects of social presence and media richness on media choice and the effects of media use. This focus on social presence and social psychological theories has led to valuable research on communication. However, little research (either empirical or theoretical) has been done to understand the ways in which media choices influence the cognitive processes that underlie communication. In this paper, we present a cognitive-based view of media choice and media use, based on dual process theories of cognition, which argue that in order for individuals to systematically process messages, they must be motivated to process the message and have the ability to process it. We argue that the use of rich media high in social presence induces increased motivation but decreases the ability to process information, while the use of lean media low in social presence induces decreased motivation but increases the ability to process information. The paradox of richness lies in its duality of impact: from a cognitive perspective, rich media high in social presence simultaneously acts to both improve and impair performance.     

广电智能推荐系统的应用研究

随着广播电视媒体的发展已经进入融合时代,融合媒体要求充分运用新技术、新应用创新传播方式.为了充分挖掘分析潜在的用户需求,针对广电业务的推荐技术越来越受到关注.通过介绍近几年推荐技术新的发展成果,在广电推荐系统应用中充分结合媒体融合、时间因素等,建立广电智能推荐系统的基本构架,提出广电领域业务的进一步设想和展望.     

5G时代新闻编辑的思维模式创新

当前社会是信息化时代,5G通信技术的应用、普及,已经为人们的生活、工作和学习带来了巨大地变化。人们获取信息的方式和媒介更加丰富。新闻编辑应该立足于传统媒体,发挥传统媒体的优势,运用创新性思维的方式,融合新媒体的特点,从而为新闻编辑的工作注入新的活力。