Weibo diplomacy: Foreign embassies communicating on Chinese social media

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2020.101477Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Social media has provided digital platforms as alternative methods to practice public diplomacy in authoritarian regimes

  • An embassy's number of followers does not always increase with the economic size of a country or the bilateral economic relationship

  • An embassy's number of followers grows with the embassy's daily posts

  • This study provides further insights into how social media has changed the traditional pattern of information flow in closed soceities

Abstract

This study investigates public diplomacy on a Chinese social media platform – Weibo. Examining the traffic (i.e., the number of followers) of 30 foreign embassies on Weibo, this study confirms that under certain conditions, digital diplomacy can be effective even in closed information systems. The results suggest that the number of followers an embassy has does not always increase with the economic size of a country or its bilateral economic relationships with China; instead, the number of followers of an embassy's Weibo account grows with the embassy's daily posts. Weibo allows embassies to unshackle the limitations imposed by their economic weight or geopolitical influence and to attract a larger audience through active daily posts. Using Weibo can also help foreign government representations in China manage changes in international relations. This study provides further insights into how social media have changed the traditional pattern of information flow not only in an open Internet environment but also in a closed social media environment where the Internet is under heavy censorship. It also proposes some recommendations for policy makers.

Introduction

Conducting public diplomacy in China is difficult for foreign countries. For example, regarding American public diplomacy, the U.S.-sponsored Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) are allowed to transmit only on shortwave radio outside of China at a certain distance from the country's border. These transmissions are frequently jammed, and the VOA and RFA websites are blocked (Senate Staff Report, 2011). During President Obama's visit to China in 2009, his interview with Southern Weekly was censored, and access to American government websites such as Whitehouse.gov in China is unreliable (Yamamoto, 2011). However, social media provide opportunities for foreign governments to reach the Chinese general public and Chinese opinion leaders (Daly, 2012). Social media's culture of sharing allows information to proliferate in a way that is difficult to censor. This study investigates public diplomacy on a Chinese social media platform: Weibo. Weibo is the Chinese microblogging equivalent of Twitter, and it combines some functions of Facebook. As of the first quarter of 2017, it had 340 million active monthly users (BBC, 2017).

This study seeks to determine the predictors of digital diplomacy performance on Weibo and to assess whether social media have changed the traditional pattern of information flow in a “closed” information system under heavy government surveillance and censorship. We use a mixed method that combines a quantitative analysis of 30 foreign embassy handles on Weibo with one qualitative case study of the Weibo account of the Israeli embassy in China. This study reveals that social media have provided digital platforms as an alternative through which foreign countries can practise public diplomacy even in closed informational systems. The economic weight and geographic influence of a country are not significant predictors of the popularity of certain embassies over others on this Chinese social media platform. Instead, engagement and good content are the strongest predictors. This study also confirms the theory that social media can be a potential game changer in international relations. Adopting digital diplomacy enables governments to manage exogenous shocks, such as international crises, and to react to endogenous incremental shifting instantly and precisely. While many studies address social media and public diplomacy, only a few have focused on the role of social media that are highly regulated and censored under authoritarian regimes. We believe that our study can contribute to the literature on this under-examined area.

The following section deals with the theoretical framework used to support the research questions and provides background information of foreign governments on Weibo. A detailed description is provided as to the research methodology, measurements and case selection, followed by the quantitative and qualitative data analyses employed. We then present underlying perspectives based on the results of the findings and offer theoretical and practical implication of the study. Finally, we summarize the limitations of the study and further research direction.

Section snippets

Theory

In this section, we discuss the role of social media in public diplomacy and how it has changed the ecology of communication in public diplomacy. We also demonstrate how foreign governments use Weibo as the most important alternative platform to reach Chinese audiences, as well as the associated challenges and opportunities they are facing. We adapt theoretical frameworks to explore the predictors of popularity on Weibo, especially under a closed information environment which endures heavy

Method

This study is combining qualitative and quantitative research methods. Using a selection of 30 foreign government embassy handles, multiple linear regressions were conducted to examine the predicators of popularity on social media in a closed society and whether non-core countries were able to challenge the information flow structure in a closed society. We used a two-wave dataset collected on August 24, 2016 and December 24, 2018. In Section 4.1, we provide a list of predictors under study. We

Multilevel analysis

The results of our multilevel analysis show that embassy accounts on social media that are more active are able to generate more followers, regardless of the economic and social status of the country and its economic relationship with China. Moreover, this study provides further insight into how social media change the pattern of information flow. In a closed social media environment in which the Internet is under heavy censorship, social media are also able to be the force that breaks the

Theoretical implications

We assume that in China, the hierarchy of information flow would not be as decentralized as it is on Twitter because of the closed social media environment and the great power mindset of social media users. Countries with larger economies or closer economic ties with China might be expected to have more influence on Weibo. However, the results tell a different story. There is no correlation between the number of followers that an embassy has and the economic and social achievement of the

Main findings

This research investigates public diplomacy on the Chinese social media platform Weibo by examining the number of followers attracted by 30 foreign embassies on Weibo as well as various economic and social achievement indicators, such as GDP, GDP per capita, and the HDI, countries' economic relationships with China, and the core-peripheral status of countries. This study also uses the Israeli embassy's handle on Weibo as a case study to test the role of social media in managing change in

Acknowledgements

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Luwei Rose Luqiu, an assistant professor at the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University. She researches censorship, propaganda and social movements in authoritarian regimes. She has been a journalist for 20 years and was a 2007 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

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    Luwei Rose Luqiu, an assistant professor at the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University. She researches censorship, propaganda and social movements in authoritarian regimes. She has been a journalist for 20 years and was a 2007 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

    Fan Yang is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany-SUNY. Her research focuses on data analysis of new media and strategic communications, and the effects of new communication technologies on decision-making.

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