Why attacking the Bureau of Industry and Commerce?”

News value flow to news comments on Chinese social media

Bibliographic Data

ID11638517
AuthorsJuan He (0000-0002-3819-9006, Jimei University, China; City University of Hong Kong, China, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume43
Issue4
Pages733-749
Publication date2021-03-24
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedia Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-4437 • E-ISSN: 1460-3675
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0163443721994433
OpenAlexW3137099269
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited51

Comments on social media provide a suitable site to view text-reader relations from the perspective of news reading. This article interrogates readers’ evaluative responses to Weibo shared news in China. The study, drawing upon Discursive News Values Analysis and appraisal, first identifies the news values of Eliteness, Personalization, Negativity and Positivity in a news story about car quality sourced from the Weibo network of People’s Daily. Then the following 1027 comments, including Chinese characters and emojis, are investigated by using a mixed-methods approach. The corpus analysis shows that business Eliteness (the Mercedes dealership) and Personalization (the buyer) are convergently valued news actors, while readers evaluate authoritative Eliteness (the Bureau) in an unexpected way. Close examination of the appraisal devices in the comments uncovers a divergence between negative judgment toward Eliteness and positive affect/judgment for Personalization. Emojis play an important role in activating attitudes through the interplay with language. In commentary journalism, the readers’ response can influence news value decisions when there is a mismatch between the news values promoted by news organizations and the values that readers perceive as newsworthy

Advertising · Affect (linguistics · Business · China · Divergence (linguistics · Journalism · Linguistics · Media studies · Negativity effect · News media · News values · Personalization · Political science · Public relations · Reading (process · Social media · Sociology · Value (mathematics · World Wide Web · Communication · Computer Science · Digital Communication and Language · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology

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