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Social media interactions between government and the public: A Chinese case study of government WeChat official accounts on information related to COVID-19

The concept of a public energy field is central to public administration discourse theory. Its main idea is the facilitation of dialog between government and the public, on the basis of equality, to construct a public policy consensus. In contemporary society, social media provides new and distincti...

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Autores principales: Shao, Chang’an, Guan, Xin, Sun, Jiajing, Cole, Michael, Liu, Guiying
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9485838/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36148095
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955376
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author Shao, Chang’an
Guan, Xin
Sun, Jiajing
Cole, Michael
Liu, Guiying
author_facet Shao, Chang’an
Guan, Xin
Sun, Jiajing
Cole, Michael
Liu, Guiying
author_sort Shao, Chang’an
collection PubMed
description The concept of a public energy field is central to public administration discourse theory. Its main idea is the facilitation of dialog between government and the public, on the basis of equality, to construct a public policy consensus. In contemporary society, social media provides new and distinctive channels for such interactions. Social media can, therefore, be conceived as a novel type of public energy field. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, interactions between the Chinese government and the Chinese public (whether located in China or abroad) have been acutely reflected through WeChat official accounts. This article focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and, through social media text mining and processing, analyzes the text topics and emotions covered. Basic principles of discourse validity, regarding this public energy field and two guarantee conditions, are applied to analyze the information exchange and dialog between the government and the public on COVID-19 through WeChat official accounts. It was found that the government’s WeChat official accounts have not yet formed a harmonious dialog space to balance the public energy field, and that the interaction between the government and the public has to be improved. The government’s social discourse had a significant influence on the public’s social discourse. Using text analysis, the study found that the government has published information on 11 topics related to the prevention and control of the pandemic. It can be argued that the public energy field presented by both the government and the public effectively portrayed and reflected the actual situation of the pandemic in China.
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spelling pubmed-94858382022-09-21 Social media interactions between government and the public: A Chinese case study of government WeChat official accounts on information related to COVID-19 Shao, Chang’an Guan, Xin Sun, Jiajing Cole, Michael Liu, Guiying Front Psychol Psychology The concept of a public energy field is central to public administration discourse theory. Its main idea is the facilitation of dialog between government and the public, on the basis of equality, to construct a public policy consensus. In contemporary society, social media provides new and distinctive channels for such interactions. Social media can, therefore, be conceived as a novel type of public energy field. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, interactions between the Chinese government and the Chinese public (whether located in China or abroad) have been acutely reflected through WeChat official accounts. This article focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and, through social media text mining and processing, analyzes the text topics and emotions covered. Basic principles of discourse validity, regarding this public energy field and two guarantee conditions, are applied to analyze the information exchange and dialog between the government and the public on COVID-19 through WeChat official accounts. It was found that the government’s WeChat official accounts have not yet formed a harmonious dialog space to balance the public energy field, and that the interaction between the government and the public has to be improved. The government’s social discourse had a significant influence on the public’s social discourse. Using text analysis, the study found that the government has published information on 11 topics related to the prevention and control of the pandemic. It can be argued that the public energy field presented by both the government and the public effectively portrayed and reflected the actual situation of the pandemic in China. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9485838/ /pubmed/36148095 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955376 Text en Copyright © 2022 Shao, Guan, Sun, Cole and Liu. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Shao, Chang’an
Guan, Xin
Sun, Jiajing
Cole, Michael
Liu, Guiying
Social media interactions between government and the public: A Chinese case study of government WeChat official accounts on information related to COVID-19
title Social media interactions between government and the public: A Chinese case study of government WeChat official accounts on information related to COVID-19
title_full Social media interactions between government and the public: A Chinese case study of government WeChat official accounts on information related to COVID-19
title_fullStr Social media interactions between government and the public: A Chinese case study of government WeChat official accounts on information related to COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Social media interactions between government and the public: A Chinese case study of government WeChat official accounts on information related to COVID-19
title_short Social media interactions between government and the public: A Chinese case study of government WeChat official accounts on information related to COVID-19
title_sort social media interactions between government and the public: a chinese case study of government wechat official accounts on information related to covid-19
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9485838/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36148095
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955376
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