The microblogging discourse of disasters
Twitter and Weibo in action in the aftermath of two major industrial accidents
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12346707 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xiaoping Wu (0000-0002-9580-7848, University of Macau, corresponding author), M Montgomery (0000-0002-8426-4817, Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 731-749 |
| Publication date | 2021-06-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Semiotics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1035-0330 • E-ISSN: 1470-1219 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10350330.2021.1931097 |
| OpenAlex | W3167548013 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 39 |
This study explores how micro-bloggers react to disasters in social media by examining the discursive-semiotic activities activated in Twitter and Weibo in responding to the 2013 West explosion in the US and the 2015 Tianjin explosions in China. By analyzing 1322 Weibo posts and 1387 Twitter posts, the article shows how users of Twitter and Weibo mobilized alternative repertoires of representatives, expressives, directives, commissives and eliciting to make sense of disasters, in ways which in turn evoked a contrasting sense of communities of collective purpose. While the discourse of the 2013 West explosion reflected a strong sense of the creation, sharing and distribution of knowledge, as well as showing support and sympathy to the suffering, the discourse of the 2015 Tianjin explosions, displayed strong critical and oppositional properties that disrupted the official discourse of the accident. This study contributes not only to a better understanding of social media in disaster communication, but also to the methodologies for studying social media data in relation to disasters
Action (physics · China · Epistemology · Media studies · Microblogging · Political science · Public relations · Semiotics · Social media · Sociology · Sympathy · Disaster Management and Resilience · Law · Psychology · Public Relations and Crisis Communication · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology
The Language of Evaluation
The Virtual Community
Twitter adoption and use in mass convergence and emergency events
Styles of stance in English
The Power of the Internet in China
How To Do Things With Words
An Introduction to Functional Grammar
Discursive strategies of resistance on Weibo
Scientific Evidence and Science Journalism
Citizen camera-witnessing
Blog Functions as Risk and Crisis Communication During Hurricane Katrina
Social media as semiotic technology and social practice
Studying social media as semiotic technology
Memes as speech acts
Language as social semiotic
The performance of publicness in social media
Witnessing
Witnessing in crisis contexts in the social media age
The Discourse of Broadcast News
Imagined communities
Hidden in plain sight
Talkback, Community and the Public Sphere
Language has a heart
I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately
A classification of illocutionary acts
Publics and Counterpublics
Speech Acts Within Facebook Status Messages
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1.25 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |