Emerging Limitations
Let Social Media Platforms Be Obedient: Tit-for-Tat Strategy on Chinese Cyberspace Governance
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jane Huang
The aim of this empirical study is to determine Chinese cyberspace governance, analyse its inner mechanism and methods of internet regulation, and identify the specific strategies utilised in local institutions’ specific practice. Qualitative methods were adopted for this study which employs semi-structured interviews with media platform owners and opinion leaders. Following data collection, the thematic analysis, which adopt the method of inductive coding, was applied to discover and understand themes and the deep information with clear and systematic illustrations. Tit-for-Tat strategy including persuasion approach and punishment approach is applied to regulate the platforms, opinion leaders, and accounts in digital age. This qualitative research also tests whether or not the control of internet is reflective of authoritarian resilience. The authoritarian resilience is apparent in the institutionalisation of laws and regulations, administrative acts by law and tolerance of small-scale criticism in order to enhance the government’s capabilities. However, the resilience of the state has been questioned if the increased power of Cyberspace Administration will not pursue reforms and self-improvement but rather rely on opinion guidance and information restrictions of the cyberspace regulations. In summary, although Chinese government can reap short-term online benefit, the operation and specific regulations adopted by local Cyberspace Administration will damage the authoritarian resilience in the long run.
China’s Digital Nationalism: Search Engines and Online Encyclopaedias
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dechun Zhang
Search engines play a vital role in locating, organising, and spreading knowledge in China. Although there is a growing interest in China’s search engines, relatively few studies have examined their role involving nationalism. In order to determine search engines’ socio-political implications, this paper compares top thirty search results from Baidu, 360 Search, Sogou Search and Google regarding the “Meng Wanzhou Incident”, focusing on overlap, ranking, and bias patterns. Furthermore, this study also analyses the differences between Wikipedia and China’s online encyclopaedias concerning the “Meng Wanzhou Incident” in terms of content, sources and their main arguments. This paper finds: 1) Chinese search engines and online encyclopaedias favour their own services’ in ranking, which implies that different search engines can construct diverse social realities; 2) China’ search engines are rarely linked to their competitors’ websites, thereby offering a unique and selective content bias; 3) search engines’ national biased knowledge raises search bias concerns; 4) Chinese online encyclopaedias offer a strong biased argument by using an emotive writing style and a single source of references. Overall, this paper finds that Chinese search engines service the Chinese government’s self-interest by rendering biased social realities; moreover, they produce a logic of “imagined communities” to promote and stimulate nationalism.
The Power of Language in Online Articles about Companies’ Unethical Behaviours: The Strategies of Linguistic Manipulation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Oksana Shkurska
Companies that undergo a crisis due to unethical behaviour are often under fire of leading online media. However, do the media follow ethical communication principles when they write about the companies that ended up in a scandal due to their mishaps? How objective are news articles about companies’ crises? Do the authors of these stories use sound arguments and a neutral tone, or do they try to manipulate the audience’s opinion, using linguistic manipulation devices? This qualitative research involves a critical discourse analysis of thirty randomly selected articles from reputable online media such as The Guardian, Forbes, The Globe and Mail, Business Insider, CNN Business, and Washington Post that cover the scandals resulting from companies’ unethical behaviour. All the analyzed articles use a range of strategies of linguistic manipulation that help the authors to influence the audience’s perception of particular brands, which affects the companies’ reputation and therefore their sale volumes, stock’s value, and overall profits. The aim of this study is to identify the linguistic devices of manipulation in media discourse and demonstrate their possible effect on brand perception. The results of this study can be used to create more objective news articles and press releases that will avoid manipulation of the audience’s opinion and will allow creating brand perception based solely on facts without being influenced by authors’ predisposition.
