全球智库信息集成服务系统

Chinese opinion is attuned to both local and national government responses.

• Twitter posts on the Husi expired-meat incident had high rates of use for first-person singular pronouns, suggesting negativity regarding the scandal immediately after its occurrence.
• Twitter frustration regarding the incident may have been directed less toward the local government and more toward the national government and U.S. companies.
• Weibo users appear to have felt a greater sense of community and less depression or insecurity regarding the national government.
• First-person singular pronouns were used in weibos discussing local government nearly twice as often as in those discussing the national government.
• At the same time, Weibo users directed more expressions of anger toward the national government than local governments.
• While very few weibos in the sample referenced America or U.S. companies (likely because of a delay in data collection), those that did contained far more posts about responsibility or blame than did those referring to Chinese entities.

Psycholinguistic analysis of Chinese-language social media can help provide insight into the attitudes of Twitter and Sina Weibo users toward local government, national government, and Western companies. Because the issue of food safety engages important themes in Chinese domestic politics — including the watchdog role of the press and the challenges of effective oversight in an authoritarian system — this analysis focused on social media content discussing the July 2014 "Husi incident," a food safety scandal involving expired meat in McDonalds and KFC. Results suggested that Chinese-language social media users expressed more anger and sadness — but also used more words indicating positive emotions or feelings of kinship — when discussing the national government than when discussing the local government.

Discussions on openly accessible Chinese microblogging platforms may thus offer an avenue through which to gauge public opinion on issues of domestic politics, although their value may wane as a result of government attempts to curb the use of social media to mobilize individuals online into organized, politically motivated groups offline. This exploration of Chinese-language social media regarding food safety traces a preliminary road map to conduct such analysis, including a methodology for analyzing Chinese-language social media as well as a discussion of the promises and limitations of social media analysis in this unique context.

• Chapter One

  Social Media Use in China for Political Expression

• Chapter Two

  Automated Analysis of Social Media Use in China

• Chapter Three

  Results

• Chapter Four

  Conclusions

• Appendix

  Search Taxonomy