Digital activism and collective mourning by Chinese netizens during COVID-19.

This study examines the discursive practice of mourning and commenting by netizens on the final social media post made by Dr Li Wenliang, regarding it as a form of political participation and competitive discursive politics enacted in cyberspace. Discourse theory is applied to conduct discourse analysis on 4000 comments. We identified two strategies that netizens used to establish an alternative space for discourse. The first involved hidden protests expressed through multi-semantic mourning, avoiding suppression by indirectly challenging official authorities. Second, through engagement with microblogs, netizens applied personalized narratives to form a collective memory and a counter-memory space that departed from the official normative narrative. Discursive activities enacted by netizens stimulated the political agenda of resilient adjustment on the part of the authorities, leading the government to accept and incorporate public demands into policies through strategic rectification. These findings help to better understand the significant power of disorganized connective action that is reliant on affective citizens and the further development of regime resilience on the part of the Chinese political system in response to digital activities.

Fear of Evaluation and Online Self-Disclosure on WeChat: Moderating Effects of Protective Face Orientation.

Fear of evaluation is a key factor that affects how social media users present themselves to others, but little is known about the effects and mechanisms involved, especially on the relationship between fear of positive evaluation and online self-disclosure. This study explores how fear of evaluation affects online self-disclosure and examines how this relationship is moderated by protective face orientation in the Chinese context. A total of 750 Chinese WeChat users constituted the sample for a questionnaire-based analysis and regression analysis. The results showed that both fear of positive evaluation and fear of negative evaluation had a significant negative effect on the amount of online self-disclosure and a significant positive effect on the depth of online self-disclosure. Protective face orientation had a moderating effect on the relationship between fear of evaluation and online self-disclosure for both the amount and depth of online self-disclosure. Our findings suggest that social network site (SNS) users' fear of evaluation can be attributed to their cognitive attitude toward the external environment, and the loss of face in the Chinese context can be included in the social context.

Social Media Use for Health Communication by the CDC in Mainland China: National Survey Study 2009-2020.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, public health incidents that pose a serious threat to public life have occurred frequently in China. The use of social media by public health authorities has helped to reduce these threats by increasing effective risk communication between the government and the public. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to reveal how China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses social media to improve three aspects of health communication between the government and the public: adoption, operation, and interaction. METHODS: To analyze the 134 CDC government Weibo accounts at the provincial- and prefecture-level administration regions in mainland China, we collected their account data and extracted 1215 Weibo tweets. We also supplemented the data to reveal the overall performance of the CDC's government Weibo use during the COVID-19 crisis. RESULTS: The registration rate of the CDC's government Weibo accounts increased year by year, and the local authorities registered Weibo accounts before the central government authorities. In total, 29.8% (n=134) of the 450 CDC facilities have registered an account. Among the 134 CDC facilities that have registered Weibo accounts, the registration rate in the eastern region (n=68, 50.7%) was higher than those in the central region (n=30, 22.4%) and the western region (n=36, 26.9%). Nearly 90.0% of these Weibo accounts had official certification, but there were dropouts in the specific operating process. One-third of the accounts have not been updated for more than 1 year, and the number of Weibo followers was polarized, with a maximum and minimum difference of 1 million. The response rate to users' comments was less than 1%. Emergency information, multimedia content, and original content were more helpful in promoting communication between the government and the public. Such interaction was partially improved during the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC updated the daily epidemic situation and provided popular science information for epidemic prevention and control for the public in a timely manner. CONCLUSIONS: China's CDC is using more social media to popularize daily health information and has taken the first step to improve communication between the government and the public. However, equal dialogue, two-way interactions, and effective communication with the public still need improvement.

Pregnancy-Related Information Seeking and Sharing in the Social Media Era Among Expectant Mothers: Qualitative Study.

BACKGROUND: Social media has become the most popular communication tool used by Chinese citizens, including expectant mothers. An increasing number of women have adopted various forms of social media channels, such as interactive websites, instant messaging, and mobile apps, to solve problems and obtain answers to queries during pregnancy. Although the use of the internet by pregnant women has been studied extensively worldwide, limited research exists that explores the changing social media usage habits in China, where the 1 child policy ended in 2015. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to (1) present the status quo of pregnancy-related information seeking and sharing via social media among Chinese expectant mothers, (2) reveal the impact of social media usage, and (3) shed light on pregnancy-related health services delivered via social media channels. METHODS: A qualitative approach was employed to examine social media usage and its consequences on pregnant women. A total of 20 women who had conceived and were at various stages of pregnancy were interviewed from July 20 to August 10, 2017. Thematic analysis was conducted on the collected data to identify patterns in usage. RESULTS: Overall, 80% (16/20) of participants were aged in their 20s (mean 28.5 years [SD 4.3]). All had used social media for pregnancy-related purposes. For the seeking behavior, 18 codes were merged into 4 themes, namely, gravida, fetus, delivery, and the postpartum period; whereas for sharing behaviors, 10 codes were merged into 4 themes, namely, gravida, fetus, delivery, and caretaker. Lurking, small group sharing, bad news avoidance, and cross-checking were identified as the preferred patterns for using social media. Overall, 95% (19/20) of participants reported a positive mental impact from using social media during their pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS: It is indisputable that social media has played an increasingly important role in supporting expectant mothers in China. The specific seeking and sharing patterns identified in this study indicate that the general quality of pregnancy-related information on social media, as well as Chinese culture toward pregnancy, is improving. The new themes that merge in pregnancy-related social media use represent a shift toward safe pregnancy and the promotion of a more enjoyable pregnancy. Future prenatal care should provide further information on services related to being comfortable during pregnancy and reducing the inequality of social media-based services caused by the digital divide.

A model and simulation of the emotional contagion of netizens in the process of rumor refutation.

The emotional contagion of netizens is an important factor that accelerates the spread of rumors, and it is also key to the effectiveness of rumor refutation. Based on the existing emotional model, we improved the method for calculating the emotional value and the transformation rules to simulate how the infection transforms individual emotion to group emotion during rumor refutation. The results show that the cycle and trend of netizen emotional change vary by period, but the final distribution structure presents a relatively stable state. The factors that affect the emotional changes of netizens are mainly objective and subjective aspects, both of which can promote the evolution of emotional contagion. The objective aspect depends on the speed and credibility of the rumor, and the subjective aspect depends on the degree of intimacy between netizens. After rumor refutation, emotions generally change from negative emotions to positive or immune emotions.

Pitaya HpWRKY3 Is Associated with Fruit Sugar Accumulation by Transcriptionally Modulating Sucrose Metabolic Genes HpINV2 and HpSuSy1.

Sugar level is an important determinant of fruit taste and consumer preferences. However, upstream regulators that control sugar accumulation during fruit maturation are poorly understood. In the present work, we found that glucose is the main sugar in mature pitaya (Hylocereus) fruit, followed by fructose and sucrose. Expression levels of two sucrose-hydrolyzing enzyme genes HpINV2 and HpSuSy1 obviously increased during fruit maturation, which were correlated well with the elevated accumulation of glucose and fructose. A WRKY transcription factor HpWRKY3 was further identified as the putative binding protein of the HpINV2 and HpSuSy1 promoters by yeast one-hybrid and gel mobility shift assays. HpWRKY3 was localized exclusively in the nucleus and possessed trans-activation ability. HpWRKY3 exhibited the similar expression pattern with HpINV2 and HpSuSy1. Finally, transient expression assays in tobacco leaves showed that HpWRKY3 activated the expressions of HpINV2 and HpSuSy1. Taken together, we propose that HpWRKY3 is associated with pitaya fruit sugar accumulation by activating the transcriptions of sucrose metabolic genes. Our findings thus shed light on the transcriptional mechanism that regulates the sugar accumulation during pitaya fruit quality formation.

Social Media Landscape of the Tertiary Referral Hospitals in China: Observational Descriptive Study.

BACKGROUND: Social media has penetrated all walks of life. Chinese health care institutions are increasingly utilizing social media to connect with their patients for better health service delivery. Current research has focused heavily on the use of social media in developed countries, with few studies exploring its usage in the context of developing countries, such as China. Tertiary hospitals in China are usually located in city centers, and they serve as medical hubs for multiple regions, with comprehensive and specialized medical care being provided. These hospitals are assumed to be the pioneers in creating official social media accounts to connect with their patients due to the fact that they appear to have more resources to support this innovative approach to communication and health care education. OBJECTIVE: The objective of our study was to examine China's best tertiary hospitals, as recognized by The National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China (NHCPRC), and to map out the landscape of current social media usage by hospitals when engaging with patients. METHODS: We examined the best 705 tertiary hospitals in China by collecting and analyzing data regarding their usage of popular Chinese social media apps Sina Weibo and WeChat. The specific data included (1) hospital characteristics (ie, time since established, number of beds, hospital type, and regions or localities) and (2) status of social media usage regarding two of the most popular local social media platforms in China (ie, time of initiation, number of followers, and number of tweets or posts). We further used a logistic regression model to test the association between hospital characteristics and social media adoption. RESULTS: Of all, 76.2% (537/705) tertiary referral hospitals have created official accounts on either Sina Weibo or WeChat, with the latter being more popular among the two. In addition, our study suggests that larger and newer hospitals with greater resources are more likely to adopt social media, while hospital type and affiliation with universities are not significant predictors of social media adoption among hospitals. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that hospitals are more inclined to use WeChat. The move by hospitals from Sina Weibo to WeChat indicates that patients are not satisfied by mere communication and that they now place more value on health service delivery. Meanwhile, utilizing social media requires comprehensive thinking from the hospital side. Once adopted, hospitals are encouraged to implement specific rules regarding social media usage. In the future, a long journey still lies ahead for hospitals in terms of operating their official social media accounts.