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摘 要

在微博等社交网络崛起的自媒体时代，信息传播的去中心化逐渐成为主流趋势。各个政务机构也开始着手利用社交网络进行政治宣传，舆论引导，信息发布。在以新浪微博为代表的社交网络系统中，社会突发事件所带来的舆论舆情呈现出一种传播速度快，诉诸情感，易出现多次反复的特点。此种情况下，对于舆论舆情的合理地、适时地引导也就势在必行了。共青团中央官微作为政务类微博中最具影响力的官方微博账户，在应对各种突发舆情中大获成功，并成功构建了自己的信源形象，扩大了影响力。

本文应用卡尔·霍夫兰，欧文·贾尼斯，哈罗德·凯利等人在上世纪提出的传播与劝服理论，并结合议题设置等经典舆论引导理论，对共青团的舆论引导策略进行研究。文章第一部分主要讨论共青团如何通过其可信度、区分度等要素成功构建信源形象，并最终赢得公众的信任；第二部分，本文分析了在引导舆论时的共青团中央官微的传播内容，其利用贴近青年的网络文本要素，活泼的文本风格和诉诸情感的传播技巧成功对舆论进行了引导；第三部分，笔者利用定量研究，结合传播与劝服理论对共青团中央官微的主要受众进行分析，发现共青团中央官微的受众多为中青年群体，其对社交媒体的认知受二级意见领袖的影响程度大。对共青团中央官微的舆论引导策略进行分析后，笔者得到如下结论：共青团中央通过拉近自身与社交网络主要使用群体，即中青年群体之间的距离，成功构建了一个可信的、无私的信源形象。再结合特定的文本风格、主题设置和传播技巧，共青团中央官微对其受众对突发事件的认知产生了不可忽略的影响，并最终达成了引导舆论、疏导舆论的目的。

关键词：社交网络；舆论引导；共青团中央；突发事件

Abbreviations

CCCYL The Central Officials of the Communist Youth League.

CYL The Communist Youth League

OL Opinion Leader

TSFC` Two Step Flow Communication

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments i

English Abstract ii

摘要 iv

Abbreviations v

Introduction 1

Research Background and Significance 1

Literature Review 3

Theoretical Framework 8

Thesis Statement and Thesis Structure 9

Chapter One Source Credibility of the CYL's Weibo 10

1.1 The Successful Construction of Credibility in CYL's Weibo 10

1.1.1The Objectivity and Selflessness of the CYL's Weibo 10

1.1.2The Potential Promise and Discrimination of the CYL's Weibo in Public Opinion 13

Chapter Two The Content of the Public Opinion Guidance in the CYL's Weibo 18

2.1 Themes of CYL's Weibo Text in Emergent Public Opinion 18

2.2 Text Analysis of Public Opinion in Response to Emergencies 20

2.2.1 Elements of Ideas and Their Frequency of Appearance in the Text 20

2.2.2 Persuasion Skills in the Text 24

2.2.3 Methods of Disseminating the Text 26

Chapter Three The Audiences under the Public Opinion Guidance in the CYL's Weibo 27

3.1 Target Audience Composition 27

3.1.1 The Strength of Audience's Original Opinion 27

3.1.2 Personality Profile of Audience 28

Conclusion 31

Works Cited 32

Introduction

Research Background and Significance

Weibo is a new platform that emerged as a key social media in recent years. With their explosive growth and extensive influence, a number of social media: Twitter, Facebook and Sina Weibo, initiate a set of transformation and vividly illustrate the new format, new features and new results in this great revolution (Kietzmann,amp; Hermkens, 243). Those common netizens, including more than 100 million Weibo users, create an average of 100 million original Weibos per minute, which constitutes the "public voice" in the macro-picture of the cyber world. Weibo is changing the public opinion, reshaping public life and promoting rapid social changes in China. Although the information capacity of micro-blog is limited to 140 words, it is Weibo that has become the most instant and convenient channel for information dissemination.

Social media function as an incubator of public opinion because of its advantages, such as simplicity, immediacy, portability and flexibility. Magnified by virtue of the instantaneity, accessibility and popularity of portable digital devices, social media platforms like Weibo shoulder the responsibility of political participation and promotion(Yang et al. 332). In such background, Weibo agglomerates the ideas of numerous common people into a powerful joint voice, displaying the incomparable advantages of new media. The rise of Weibo witnesses time after time the legends and myths made by new media and attests the creed that "View counts is power" (Ponder, 3). The extensive use of Weibo official account offers a crucial access for netizens to obtaining news and information, establish interpersonal relationship, accomplish self-expression, social sharing and even social participation. Meanwhile, the fact that official accounts of government and institutions mushroom in Weibo reflects its political value and giant user base. Marketing of ideology and garnering audience response are all realized on this platform. Meanwhile, the supervisory bodies, institutions and political parties gain new channel to react to public opinion and contain rumour mongering.

Furthermore, Weibo, which is both of attributes and functions of media and social intercourse, reshapes the pattern of information dissemination in China. Chinese people's information acquisition methods and habits are deeply influenced in this silent transformation. Weibo, as a channel for bi-directional information exchange, accelerates the important alternation of people's information expression, communication, social contact and thinking habits. As the main user group of Weibo, the effect on them is more extensive and profound. Weibo has changed their way of thinking, lifestyle and social behavior. According to rules and constitutions of the Communist Youth League, the CYL is a political organization exclusively for young people and teenagers. The Communist Youth League shoulders the glorious mission of guiding young people and teenagers. Therefore, in the current situation, the official account of Weibo of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League becomes a new media platform to guide and serve young people and teenagers.

As increasingly more people tend to share their first-hand information on the Weibo platform, the development of public opinion may be explosive and unpredictable, especially when some social emergencies take place. Those influential incidents give rise to a series of responding public sentiment and opinion, which are often misled by some opinion leaders. Those misled audience of social with abused freedom of speech are more possibly bring potential damage to the steadiness of society and judicial justice. Through the collective action of social media celebrities and ignorant followers, a small problem may grow into a farce or a tragedy and exert enormous invisible impact on outsiders, such as the case of “Yu Huan murdering loan sharks”. Therefore, the public opinion need proper guidance. The research on control and guidance in emergencies are of great practical significance.

Literature Review

Guidance of Public Opinion on Weibo

At present, the research on the special product of the official Weibo account is on the rise. The domestic research on this field has increased sharply. From the first year of Weibo - 2009 to 2019, the keyword “官微”(official Weibo account of governmental organizations) can be searched through CNKI and 537 related studies are found. However, among those studies, the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League remains little-known as the subject of public opinion guidance. In the field of public opinion guidance, the focus of current research is on public opinion in emergencies and prediction and monitoring of it in social network (Leung, 43). In light of the existing directed guidance mechanism for emergencies, Zhang, Jing believes that during the social transition period of China, emergencies can attract enormous public attention and spark the storm of publicity (2). Therefore, moderate and correct guidance of the public opinion in emergencies will not only exert effect on the event but also on the transformation and development of society. In addition, Zhang Wuqiao believes that modern information technology should be fully utilized to help establish a sound network or mechanism to forecast or monitor public opinion (57).

Xu Jialin’s research in 2011 indicates that negative comments on social media like Weibo are more likely to trigger intense public skepticism and criticism which may be based on rumors or biased perception of factual information (174). The laissez-faire policy on public opinions may be a covert act of connivance of public panic and mistrust. Therefore, Jiang proposes several methods of improving the guidance of public opinion.

However, some scholars have studied the issues related to official Weibo accounts from the guidance of information and public opinion on social platforms. Cui Yanchen believes that netizens express their opinions on social status and social development through the Internet and comment on current events, which has a positive effect on promoting public opinion supervision, democracy and the rule of law (120). At the same time, the extreme emotional tendency of online political public opinion has a certain negative impact on social harmony, the image and authority of the party and the government, and it even erodes the basis of the legality of the political system. The network political paradox reflects the political identity of the people to a certain extent, and the extreme emotionalization of the network political opinion is, to some extent, a reflection of the crisis of the people's political identity. Xu Jialin proposed to use the official Weibo account to publish information. By carefully using the network language to divert the emotions of netizens and actively guiding the trend of public opinion, it can reduce the chance of extreme emotionalization of online political public opinion and for the general netizens. Negative impacts and possible political and social shocks become prevalent.

In the issue of public opinion and CYC, Ye Shao furthers her study on the direction and guidance of public perception through Hovland’s theories on mass media. She put forth a brand new angle of analysis of CYC’s Weibo account- source credibility and information of dissemination. The author quotes some emergencies and their countermeasures as prime example of CYC’s successes on Weibo and indicates the improving space of daily operation. However, those two authors applied the theories of mass media rather than social media and follow some golden rules which may not completely match the situation in which is revert of younger generation prevail.

Basic Function of Official Account

Some studies focus on summarizing the problems and countermeasures in various types of official accounts, the extreme emotionalization of online political opinion and the political identity of the people. In the article "Strategic Research on the Development of the Youth League's Weibo", Zhang Jin mainly applied theories of political communication, public governance, use and gratification, to summarize the current situation of the Communist Youth League Central Committee, pointing out that of existing microblog accounts the operating mechanism of the Communist Youth League is not perfect. The online thought-guiding function is not fully reflected and the original ability is low. Zhang Jin believes that to solve the problems in the Youth League microblog, we should focus on building the Communist Youth League brand, actively cultivating opinion leaders, and strengthen the training of the operation team. The research by Stefan Stieglitz and Linh Dang-Xuan suggests that social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are considered to have the potential to increase political participation. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have sparked more frequent political discussions. They believe that the need to continuously collect, monitor, analyze, and summarize political information from social media and visualize it has emerged. These "social media analytics" activities are still a daunting task due to the large number of different social media platforms and the sheer volume of complex information. They proposed a methodology framework for social media analysis. More specifically, their framework is interdisciplinary and applies mathematical statistics tools to analyze and summarize important political activities such as the US election. In "Microblogging: An Analysis of Government Issued Policies and Best Practices," Paula Lenor Webb believes that the use of social media, such as Twitter, has become the biggest innovation and reform in the Obama administration in 2009. Webb believes that this made the Obama administration become ever more transparent. More importantly, the continuous propaganda and pre-set interaction on social platform has enormously helped the Obama administration to promote the reform of new medical care policies. By constantly steering the agenda, the Obama administration succeeded in making more people feel their political participation. Webb believes that such changes are unprecedented, and that social platforms provide a direct, efficient, and authentic dialogue between government organizations and the public.

Official Use of Social Networks

In addition to public opinion guidance, the study of official use of social networks mainly focuses on three aspects: First, the use of Weibo for government services, government and civilian communication and policy promotion. In this regard, Cao Jingsong summarizes the development process of the official Weibo in the article "Government Organization Weibo and Exchanges between Government and People"(60). He believes that Weibo is not only a convenient and fast communication tool, but “The communication of all people”. So using Weibo to guide public opinion is also the meaning of the title (61). However, Meng Lan points out that negative behaviors such as misinformation, abduction of public opinion, and distraction of society in Weibo cannot be ignored(46). Meng Lan holds that the development of negative public opinion on official institutions, such as governmental agencies and senior officials, may aggravate the harm of Weibo. However, he also states that the appropriate development of public opinion can expand the positive factors of Weibo, mitigate the negative impact of Weibo, and lay the foundation for a new interactive channel between government and people.

In the west, scholars in related fields mainly regard Weibo’s American counterparts such as originators of social media (Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp) as the research object. The official accounts of government agencies and public management organizations in these social media also attract a legion of scholars’ attention. Yang, Chen, Maity and Ferra use Twitter data and agenda setting theory as tools to track the White House's official Facebook account, the Republican Party’s accounts, the Democratic Party's official Twitter account, and explore some secrets of the campaign propaganda of US President Barack Obama. (342)They finds the pattern of daily political discussions and the political promotion in presidential elections. Effing, R., van Hillegersberg, J’s research reveals political propaganda and the main topics that the propaganda raises(51). Almost all of researchers above believe that for most American minority politicians, Twitter and Facebook are a powerful tool for interacting with the public. While communicating with the netizens, the campaign group switch their concerns to pre-set topics rather than those in the first place (Vromen, 61). This coincides with the research of domestic scholars. In addition, they focus on the important themes in the bipartisan political dialogue and find that Republicans and Democrats are both active on Twitter, but they shows different styles in communication and information transmission. By studying the frequency of related tags and keywords, they found that Republicans and Democrats formed two close but polarized core issues, with very different agenda settings on many heated issues .

In short, most of the domestic research and their counterparts abroad focus on the discussion of specific situations such as countermeasures of certain negative impact of rumors and solution of concentrated concern of scandals on the social platform. Some Chinese scholars, such as Ye Shao, argue that the major existing problem in the official Weibo account is the catastrophic impact of chaotic public opinion. Foreign studies on the guidance of public opinion in the general elections also concern the public opinion environment of the network politics, which is quite different from the domestic one. In assessing the emergencies on the social media, most scholars are used to involving either the classic theories of politics propaganda or brand new methods of social media. They leave a research gap for their neglect of combination between the guidance of public opinion and the entities that are able to perform such guidance. Therefore, the significance of my research lies in filling this joint topic.

Theoretical Framework

According to Kietzmann, social media refers to interactive virtual communities and network that promote the production and communication of information, occupational inclinations, opinion and other forms of expressions (241). Social media include multiple forms and styles. In this essay, the discussion of social media is mainly about Sina Weibo. The public opinion is the collective attitude, comments and thoughts toward certain issue or topic. The guidance of public opinions is a process of shaping the attitude and ideas in public sphere and redirect them to the pre-set agenda. In this article, the definition of opinion leaders and opinion leadership follows the classical illustration of Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katzby, which refer to active media users who interpret the meaning of media messages or content for lower-end media users. The opinion leader is held in high esteem by those who receive their explanation and opinion.(5)

In the course of guiding public opinion, persuasion and communication are the essential parts. According to the theory of C. I. Hovland, I.J. Janis and H.H.Kelly, the successful persuasion in mass media contains two steps: opinion change and behavioral change. This theoretical model and related experiment offer a great method to reveal how the CYL carry out a successful guidance of opinion. Elements in communication and persuasion theory can effectively measure the accomplishment and influence of the CYL’s official account.

In the section of persuasive skills of the CYL’s official account, agenda setting theories and two-step flow of communication model provide alternatives to illustrate what methods the CYL apply on the social media and how the texts of CYL communicate in such a complex environment. Although agenda setting theories may ignore some facets of social psychology, the communication and persuasion theory can complement its lack of group studies. Also, Hovland’s theory bears some limitations on its division for the process of communication. It is too general to attribute the communication to a simple intermediary part. The model of two-step flow of communication can be the remedy for such flawed generalization and add some beneficial elements, such as the opinion leader, into my studies. The understanding of agenda setting theories is based on the description developed by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw(7). Agenda setting attempts to make predictions. That is, if a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important.

Thesis Statement and Thesis Structure

In general, the CCCYL’s official Weibo account handles the emergent public opinion with several types of tactics. The CCCYL inscribes an invisible mark on its followers’ mentality. Through high frequency posts, it exerts a series of subtle influence on the information receiver’s world view and sense of value. Also, the similarity of membership between CCCYL and target audience in guidance of public opinion magnifies its communication effect. The profile of target audience and large amounts of case of effective guidance attest the extraordinary means of the CCCYL’s tactics and methods. Thus, I argue that the official account of the CCCYL, as a single source, is one of the most successful official accounts in guiding public opinion.

Chapter One Source Credibility of the CYL’s Weibo

• 1. The successful construction of credibility in CYL’s Weibo account

1.1.1 The objectivity and selflessness of the CYL’s Weibo

According to communication and persuasion theory, communicators exert a great influence on the effect of communication. "The difference of effect sometimes depends on who is the source of information, who is cited in the information, or what is the channel of information dissemination" (Hovland, 52) mainly proceeds from these perspectives when doing research on credibility: whether communication is fair, reasonable, and whether the motivation for communication is more “promotional” or “informative”. To distinguish those two type of communication, it involves stance detection, formalized as the task of identifying the speaker’s opinion toward a particular target.(Bosco and Pratti, 7) The fair and reasonable and informative communication makes the audience feel that it has higher credibility. The Communist Youth League Weibo account takes the Weibo as the media channel of information dissemination. We mainly consider how it guide public opinion as an individual "source" and exerts a certain impact on its followers.

In this chapter, we introduce a factor that is not concluded in communication and persuasion theory- leadership to define the constituent factors of objectivity and selflessness of CYL’ Weibo account.

Leadership demonstrates the social image and public recognition of a source, which can picture the extent of trustworthiness (Hovlandamp;Janis, 75). Credibility is more related to the motivation and intention of the communicators when they communicate (Hovlandamp;Janis, 85). Therefore, the two major variables in this chapter are source credibility and leadership. Under the structure of communication and persuasion theory, this section mainly analyses the credibility and leadership of the CYL’s official account as a source of information

The Communist Youth League is a political organization of advanced youth led by the Communist Party of China. As an assistant and reserve army of the Chinese Communist Party, it is a educational agency where young people learn socialism and communism with Chinese characteristics in practice. The ‘League Constitution’ chapter expounds its basic duties, including: 1. The Chinese Communist Youth League should strengthen ideological and political work and put ideological and political work through all the work carried out (Sun, 12). 2. The Chinese Communist Youth League implements the principle of ‘party and youth’, which should give full play to the role of a bridge and link between youth and party (Sun, 20).

The two aspects above, leadership and credibility, are the important elements to value the objectivity and selfishness of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. Being a link between the Communist Party of China and the youth, it determines the functions of Communist Youth League’s official Weibo account (Kuang, 43): it must be able to play a leading role in public opinion, and must assume the role of channeling grassroots youth and political leaders. Therefore, only objective reflection of facts and completely reviewing the facts can gain the support of the mass. On the other hand, the Communist Youth League also shoulders ideological and political work, which also makes it necessary for its officials to undertake a considerable part of ideological promotion and shape public opinion (Miao, 3). Therefore, the Communist Youth League must actively disseminate opinions and enlarge some of the information compared to the overall event to complete its work.

Communication and persuasion theory reveals that leadership is an important factor closely related to source credibility. The correlation between leadership and source credibility is mainly reflected in: when the audience receives information with different stance, especially when multiple views are supported by different degree of society, the audience may be more likely to seek confirmatory instructions from “authoritative sources” or mainstream moral values. Therefore, if the purpose of communication is to gain social acceptance and then guide the direction of public opinion, so that the views of more audiences can be driven closer to those of the source, and ultimately shape the public opinion, the most effective communicator is the one with greater leading force in the group.

2018

2017

2016

From the data above, we may argue that in the three years from 2015 to 2018, according to the evaluation of the “Annual Impact Report of Weibo”, the comprehensive influence of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League’s official account has always been in the top two position. This data reflects the leadership and leading position of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League’s official account (Weiamp; Zhao, 53). Strong leadership confirms the extremely high objectivity and credibility of the CCCYL’s official account, which reflects the people's reliance on the CYL’s guidance.

1.1.2 The Potential Promise and Discrimination of the CYL’s Weibo in Public Opinion

Some theorists contends that the press, including social media is a branch of public administration. The rise of social media is crucial to pluralist administrative processes. However, the view of the social media as an invisible branch of fourth estate is based on the assumption that the media is a watchdog of the actions of government (Iosifidis amp; Wheeler, 15). However, the essence of CYL is an official and political organization , therefore, it is of more promise than a simple social media account.

The potential promise of the CYL is that a source can share the feeling and match the need of its audience. The great similarity of membership supports this potential promise and makes the communication of the CYL’s official account distinct from the common use of other political or official Weibo accounts. High frequency of interaction with audience and continuous following of heat debated topics that arrest the majority’s concentrations both strengthen the discrimination of the CYL’s Weibo in public opinion.

In the communication and persuasion theory, the similarity between the source and the audience. is of great significance. The similarity mainly demonstrates in terms of values, interests and needs. The functional orientation and the image construction of the CYL account are committed to wining over youth groups that are also the main audience of the the CYL account. Therefore, in this process of communication, CYL’s account, as the source, strives for a high similarity with the audience in group membership. The audience are not in a subordinate position in the interaction with the CYL’s official account . In some specific emergencies, the audience instead occupies a dominant position, such as “Tian Jialiang's Insulting Incidient”, netizens spontaneously set up online and offline investigation groups to report Tian’s willful misconduct to the official Weibo account of Liaoning Normal University, Xiamen University, and the CYL. Immediately, the CYL upload its comment essay on this incident: "double-faced people". Shortly after the criticism was released, Xiamen University and Liaoning Normal University launched an investigation on Tian Jialiang's academic misconduct. In this emergency, the transmission of information is from the bottom up, and then from the top down. It can be said that the CYL plays a double role of the receptor and the information source. Therefore, only when it must maintain a high degree of objectivity and impartiality, can CYL occupy the moral high ground in the process of interaction with young netizens, and further guide public opinion and assume its basic duty.

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