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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Theses/Dissertations

Social media

2014

Arts and Humanities

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Participatory Democracy In The Chinese Cyber World: Case Studies From Weibo, Duyi Li Dec 2014

Participatory Democracy In The Chinese Cyber World: Case Studies From Weibo, Duyi Li

Master's Theses

This thesis discusses features of citizen communication on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, and its relationship to participatory democracy in China. Weibo is a complex social space due to the interplay of different forces and social actors. On the one hand, Weibo provides the space for bottom-up political participation: it expands the horizontal discursive space where plural discourses coexist and interact; provides a social sphere where counter-discourses are created; a space where the culture of resistance is formed; and serves as an alternative source for information. On the other hand, the vertical political control of the state, and the …


Gatekeeping The Social Games In A Post-Broadcasting World: A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Nbc And User-Generated Olympic Twitter Coverage During The 2012 London Games, Daniel Anthony Sipocz May 2014

Gatekeeping The Social Games In A Post-Broadcasting World: A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Nbc And User-Generated Olympic Twitter Coverage During The 2012 London Games, Daniel Anthony Sipocz

Dissertations

This study examined the Twitter use of both traditional gatekeepers, such as NBC, and audience members during the 2012 London Summer Olympics. The exploratory study examined NBC and audience members as gatekeepers with a particular interest in the audience’s role as a gatekeeper through social media use. NBC used Twitter, a social media platform, in ways that supported traditional gatekeeping models. The network aimed to drive audiences back to the traditional television broadcast while providing the audience with the illusion of having an influence on Olympic coverage. Most significantly, this study argues that the audience became a gatekeeper of Olympic …