ii

The analysis frame of transmitting public crisis — 2015 Tianjin Explosion in Sina Weibo and People’s Daily

A study submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

MSc of Information Management

at

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

by

Danting Wan

September 2016

iii

Abstract

Background. Since the invention of Twitter in foreign countries and Weibo in China, the massive Internet absorption,

and social impact have come into being. In many public crisis events like “Tianjin explosion”, Weibo has quickly spread

information to form massive coverage and communication of public opinion, which generated direct or indirect impact

on traditional media and other new media, especially topics and events that are sensitive and involving authoritative

opinions. With the massive information updates and quick pace of release, Weibo has been close to the truth of events to

some extent.

Aims. This research is an attempt to investigate the differences of spreading frames between Sina Weibo and traditional

news report, and the influences they have on the "public event" reality constructed by the public. The above problems

are what stimulate the author to study the Weibo in the spreading mechanism of a public crisis event.

Methods. Based on the frame analysis, this research analyzed crisis event “Tianjin explosion”, which discussed in Sina

Weibo and printed in People’s Daily from the perspective of quantitative and qualitative analysis. It mainly discussed it

in term of its subject, source and communication form.

Results and Conclusions. By comparison analysis, Sina Weibo and People’s Daily both paid importance to

transmission of the disaster information and they both focused on spreading the truth of events. The writer also put

forward the differences between them. First, Sina Weibo mainly spreads information on individuals’ condolence,

mourning, and post-disaster impacts, while People’s Daily highlights disaster response and relief. And in term of the

source of information, most of it in Sina Weibo is no diversified, compared with it; People’s Daily reports are primarily

official news complemented by multiple sources of information. Besides, Sina Weibo plays the role of supervision by

public opinions in its information dissemination, while People’s Daily involves little of that as it persistently sticks to

the function of publicity. Finally, new media represented by Weibo have the obvious advantages of the technology

platform and citizen journalism, while traditional media represented by People’s Daily are superior in authority and

credibility. They two are mutually beneficial and complementary.

iv

Acknowledgement

This research would not have been accomplished without the help of many people. Firstly, I would like to thank my

supervisor Dr. Paul Reilly, who offered me great advice and support during this master dissertation project work.

Secondly, I would express my gratitude to my friends and classmates, Yi Zhao, Yushen, Ciyuan and Linda, who always

accompanied me and gave me encouragement when I experienced the up and down during this period.

v

Contents

Abstract..............................................................................................................................................................iiiAcknowledgement..............................................................................................................................................iv1. Introduction.....................................................................................................................................................1 1.1 The context of Sina Weibo.........................................................................................................................1 1.2 The context of The People's Daily.............................................................................................................2 1.3 The context of "Tianjin explosion"............................................................................................................2 1.4 The research aims and objectives..............................................................................................................32. Literature review.............................................................................................................................................4 2.1 Related research.........................................................................................................................................4 2.2 Theoretical Framework..............................................................................................................................63. Methodology...................................................................................................................................................8 3.1 Timeframes................................................................................................................................................8 3.2 Sampling of Weibo....................................................................................................................................8 3.3 Sampling of People’s Daily.......................................................................................................................9 3.4 Content analysis.......................................................................................................................................10 3.4.1 Subject Category.............................................................................................................................10 3.4.2 Source Category.............................................................................................................................11 3.4.3 Communication Form Category.....................................................................................................11 3.5 Ethical aspects.........................................................................................................................................114. Results and finding........................................................................................................................................12 4.1 Subject Category Analysis.......................................................................................................................12 4.1.1 The Dissemination of Disaster Information....................................................................................14 4.1.2 Disaster Relief................................................................................................................................16 4.1.3 Disaster Impact...............................................................................................................................18 4.1.4 Condolence and Mourning.............................................................................................................19 4.2 Source Category Analysis........................................................................................................................20 4.2.1 Weibo technology platform.............................................................................................................21 4.2.2 Source provider..............................................................................................................................22 4.3 Communication Form Category..............................................................................................................24 4.3.1 Message..........................................................................................................................................25 4.3.2 Comment........................................................................................................................................26 4.3.3 Communication..............................................................................................................................26 4.3.4 Multimedia.....................................................................................................................................275. Discussion and conclusion.............................................................................................................................28 5.1 Things the two media have in common...................................................................................................28 5.2 Contrast-based conclusions.....................................................................................................................29References.........................................................................................................................................................33Appendix...........................................................................................................................................................37

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1. Introduction

This research mainly focuses on Sina Weibo and presents a case study of "Tianjin explosion", which is a famous social

crisis event happened in 2015 China to compare with a typical conventional mass media, People's Daily, which is the

largest circulation and most authoritative newspaper in China. And the purpose is to add to a more far-reaching

comprehension of comparison between traditional media and Weibo in the event of a crisis, especially in China.

Moreover, this research also investigates the particular characteristics of Sina Weibo showed when crisis events

happened. Therefore, this research will analyze multi-angles on the contrast of performance between Sina Weibo and

traditional media in the scope of crisis events in China while increasing further more research in this field.

1.1 The context of Sina Weibo

Social network services, developing at a shocking rate in a recent year, are online services that stimulate users to share

their hobbies and activities, and thus assemble new or closer social relationship. Twitter and Facebook are the most well

know social network services in the world, while in China, Sina Weibo, a complex of Twitter and Facebook, is the most

outstanding one (Guan et al. 2014). Microblogging began operations in China in 2009 and as of the end of the fourth

quarter of 2015; Sina Weibo monthly active users have reached 236 million (Sina Tech 2015). As the Chinese version of

Twitter, Sina Weibo learns many features from Twitter. Basically, Weibo has some essential features: firstly, it allows

users to post short and brief text information. Users can edit no more than 140 words of text and add pictures or short

video, which is very convenient for both users and other readers. Moreover, Sina Weibo offers the most recent news and

information so that users can share the latest events or news surrounding them anytime and everywhere. Normally, users

post the news though the computer or smartphone, which is a kind of real-time share, is much fast than with the

traditional media, such as the newspaper. Besides, Weibo users can "follow" any micro-bloggers. The function "follow"

means users can focus closer on the micro-bloggers they like and get their all the updating news and information from

those micro-bloggers Weibo homepage. However, users usually follow micro-bloggers without their agreement that

reflects a unidirectional relationship. Thus, in this situation, users could get more information if they follow more micro-

bloggers, correspondingly, the information shared by micro-bloggers could be spread broadly if they have much more

"fans." In addition, Sina Weibo is a social media platform, and users can easily share one topic or join other topics to

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discuss them with someone also interested them that help them find more people who have the same interest (Bolsover,

n.d.)

.

1.2 The context of The People's Daily

On June 15, 1948, the People's Daily was established in Handan City, Hebei Province, merged by the "Border Area

Daily" and Shanxi "People's Daily." Initially, it was viewed as the official newspaper of the Central Bureau and took

responsibly for CPC Central Committee organ. March 15, 1949, the People's Daily with the central authorities moved to

Peking on 15th of March. On August 1, 1949, the CPC Central Committee decided to regard People's Daily as Chinese

Communist Party Central Committee official newspaper(Baidu Baike).

At present, the People's Daily has become China's most authoritative and influential newspaper and until June 2015,

circulation of the People's Daily is more than 3 million. People's Daily Overseas Edition was founded on July 1, 1985,

which is an important way to let overseas understand Chinese and Chinese understanding of the world. It also carried

home ties and bridges of communication and cultural exchanges and economic cooperation, in particular, it has a

significant influence in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and is an important way to let the Hong Kong and Taiwan compatriots

understand the latest developments in China mainland. Moreover, in 1992, the People’s Daily was assessed as one of the

ten most influential newspapers by UNESCO (the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization)

(Baidu Baike).

1.3 The context of "Tianjin explosion"

Around 23:30 on August 12th, 2015, a fire explosion occurred at the hazardous cargo warehouse of Ruihai Logistics at

the Port of Tianjin located in Binhai New Area, Tianjin City of China, resulting in the direct economic loss of ¥6.866

billion. The casualty report is 165 deaths, 8 missing, and 798 injuries. The State Council investigatory team concluded

that the 8·12 Ruihai Logistics hazardous materials fire explosion was an extraordinarily serious production safety

accident.

After the occurrence of the accident, new media led by Weibo became the primary platforms for spot news

dissemination. Citizens, netizens in other areas, Internet media, and traditional paper media formed a linkage and

delivered videos and photos of disaster site and other information to society, including hospital treatment situation, first

aid guide, and the list of hotels providing free rest services. Compared with the traditional media, new media have

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various advantages, including fast transmission speed, flexible dissemination time, rich information, broad coverage of

population, and high-level interaction. At 23:26 of August 12th, one netizen released the first post on Weibo about

Tanggu explosion: “serious fire disaster, thunder-like explosive sound”. Except for the short text description, this post

also included a 12-seconds-long video with Tianjin Port being positioned as the location of release. About 10 minutes

after the accident occurred, many netizens followed one another in uploading photos of the disaster scene and sending

these messages to lots of famous bloggers who forwarded this news. After this, "Tianjin Explosion" and "Tanggu of

Tianjin" became the hottest search terms on Weibo. In this way, the situation of the disaster scene had already been

transmitted to the Weibo platform before the traditional media got involved. Later on, "Big Explosion in Tanggu of

Tianjin" and "Tanggu Explosion" became hot topics on Weibo. Various media, netizens, and citizens disclosed

messages containing texts and photos in succession to disseminate the information on casualties, hospital treatment, and

the list of hotels providing free rest services in time, with the number of discussion participants and readers reaching

1.111 million and 0.64 billion respectively.

Shortly after the explosion occurred in the dangerous material warehouse in Binhai New Area of Tianjin City,

mainstream traditional media took the lead in reporting it. On August 13th, People's Daily published the front-page

article “Guarding the Safety Defense Line” in the column “Today’s Comment”. This article mentioned “before

Shanyang landslide was handled completely, news about the explosion in Binhai New Area of Tianjin came in the

midnight of August 12th...public security issues have brought about stiff challenges to governance. In the face of risk

society, the accidents can be prevented only if the safety awareness is internalized in every link of production and life".

On August 14th, Tianjin fire explosion accident made a front page headline and was highlighted in the report published

on People's Daily. Except for the front page, the fourth edition of the essential news further stressed the reports of this

disaster, including the instructive articles "Carrying out All-out Treatment of Wounded Personnel" and "Scientific and

Powerful Rescue, Treatment, and Settlement", an explanatory article "Answers to Four Questions about Tianjin

Hazardous Cargo Warehouse Explosion", and three articles targeted at online rumors "Online Rumor: Harmful Gas Has

Diffused to Beijing", "Netizens Reclaim the Death Toll 34 and 35 are Boundary Lines in Responsibility Investigation”,

and “Overseas Journalists’ Interviews Prevented by Officials”. Moreover, the fifth edition also published a comment on

this current affair “Disaster Is Never an Imaginary Enemy”.

1.4 The research aims and objectives

Research aims

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This research is an attempt to investigate the differences of spreading frames between Sina Weibo with the limitation of

140 characters and traditional news report, and the influences they have on the "public event" reality constructed by the

public. The above problems are what stimulate the author to study the Weibo in the spreading mechanism of a public

crisis event.

Objectives

l To investigate how Weibo users framed of the public crisis event of “Tianjin explosion” compared to the People’s Daily

framing.

l To explore which spreading themes and subjects Weibo and People’s Daily emphasize respectively.

l To assess the information sources of the Weibo and People’s Daily and the differences between them.

l To explore the differences between grassroots discourse represented by Weibo and official discourse represented by the

traditional newspaper in their orientation presented in the spreading of public crisis events and the reasons that cause the

difference.

2. Literature review

2.1 Related research

Microblogging in China has turned out to be a very new phenomenon and study field (An and Gower, 2009), but the

research related to microblogging is relatively limited. The current investigations mainly involve these different aspects,

for instance, concentrating on microblogging is a new medium of communication (Infinte, 2010; Ly-Le, n.d.),

comparison between traditional media and microblogging in the event of a crisis (Wang, 2012; Mo, 2013), media

convergence (Siegfried, 2009), public microblogging (Liu, n.d.), the behavior of microblogging users (Ley et al., 2013;

Page and Pitt, 2013), its impacts on particular occasions, and so on.

Identified with the point of these arguments, there are a lot of articles discussing how microblogging and traditional

media respond to crises events, which might help with the investing on current research.

Firstly, since these articles focus on these specific points to explore Chinese crisis. Despite the fact that a large

proportion of the articles concentrate mainly on natural disasters, for example, earthquakes and hurricanes, they are also

should be taken great account into present research.

A team of oriental researcher examined Twitter use during and after Typhoon Haiyan pummeled the Philippines in 2013.

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The moment during and after the disaster, Twitter was effectively used to reflect and post real-time news, information as

well as emotional care and promote other different activities in daily life. For example, according to Takahashi, Tandoc

and Carmichael (2015) and their group members, in their research, they figured out they mainly focuses on how people

broadcast communications which were on the site of incident during the Typhoon Haiyan pummeled the Philippines

happened in 2013 and distinguish the important information that might make contribution to raising situational

awareness. They also considered the situational update information was used to communicate with individuals through

microblogging in mass crisis situations. Their point was to sustain what time and security basic areas allude to as

situational awareness, a separately and additionally socially psychological condition of comprehension "the big

picture"(Takahashi et al., 2015, 23) aimed basic situations.

In another research of Spence, Lachlan, and Rainear（2016), they argued that the multiplication of online networking

has made new venues for inspecting how people and associations impact amid the emergency lifecycle. Albeit

promising, strategies and measures for information gathering through online networking in emergency circumstances

are unstructured, untested, and there is little concurrence on the best intends to accomplish look into objectives. They

dedicated a few practices for information accumulation, testing, and investigation of emergency correspondence

information through online networking. Focal points and drawbacks to changing methodologies are talked about. In

spite of the fact that the techniques examined in this article are not comprehensive, it is trusted that the present paper

will start continuous discussions in regards to the utility and best practices of utilizing online networking to gather

information on emergencies and dangers.

In China, a large number of studies have focused on the analysis of natural disasters and how people use microblogging

to respond to the disaster. For instance, in the research of Wang et al. (2015), the writers directed a contextual analysis

of a natural disaster: the 2012 Beijing Rainstorm，through comparative analysis of foreign blog site to investigate

China's Sina Weibo is how to react in the event of a crisis. Besides, the authors also analyzed how information is spread

in microblogging system to enable people to learn more about how to use the power of microblogging to respond to

crises and disasters.

Some examination investigated the communication aspects of microblogging in crises and gave proposals to use those

components to control the negative impacts. For instance, the research of Lv (2011) expounded the two parts of

microblogging in crises — the data stage and the popular sentiment stage. The points of interest, for example,

opportuneness and dynamic collaboration, and so on, affect microblogging to be the primary correspondent and a

capable bearer and supervisor of the general feeling in crises. Furthermore, Microblogging has made the

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influence of traditional media coverage of the crisis reporting，which is undoubtedly a great challenge and impact to

traditional media. However, due to lack of supervision of microblogging, people are free to publish the above remarks

on the microblogging, which filled with all kinds of rumors and violent comments will have a negative impact on

society. Therefore, the authors pointed out that to take appropriate measures from the government, the media as well as

microblogging operators, thereby to guide public opinion in crisis council.

Secondly, there are many studies have investigated the competition between micro-blog and print media as well as

broadcast, for example, daily newspapers, radio, and TV programs. A large portion of the research underscored the

upsides of microblogging, which broad conventional communications couldn't accomplish. After the crisis event,

microblogging tend to form their role in boosting the spread in a short time, so that the speed of propagation of news

than before the era of microblogging has been improved significantly For instance, the Research on Comparative

Analysis and Fusion of Micro-blog and Traditional Media (Mo, 2013), where we can even see the suggestion from the

title of the research, indicated the importance of enhancing the confirmed technique for correspondence of traditional

mass media and gives five "convergence ways"(Mo, 2013, 34) to meet the challenge of microblogging and other new

media, and to use new technologies and new media making integration of its superior resources, so as to enhance their

value. In the Research of Liang (2013), The author believed the traditional media should actively explore media

convergence strategy, not only to actively expand the channels of communication but also for the consolidation of

reports on the content and depth, thereby increasing public confidence in traditional media. Besides, the research Study

on Traditional Media & Micro-Blog Interactive on Emergency (Wang, 2012) presented although microblogging has

technical advantages, its complex information, as well as the presence of a vast number of false news, will make

microblogging reduce the credibility of the dissemination of information. The authority and credibility of traditional

media just can make up for deficiencies of microblogging in this regard and to become the good news filter of

microblogging, which also highlights the importance of integration between traditional media and microblogging.

In summary, the above literature makes an attempt to illustrate the significance of microblogging in times of crisis

events. However, the literature involves the comparison between microblogging and the traditional mainstream media,

such as People's Daily in the field of crisis events are not quite a board, which have inspired the author to do further

investigation to enrich the current research.

2.2 Theoretical Framework

It is generally believed, that the frame theory is an important communication theory rising in the west during

7

the late 1970s to early 1980s. But the concept of the frame can date back to the anthropologist (Bateson, 1955), who

thought that psychological frame is a batch of messages or an action of significance (Stout and Buddenbaum, 2003). In

1974, Goffman brought the frame concept to cultural sociology, gradually drawing the attention of other fields like

sociology, communication, and linguistics, thus becoming an important viewpoint of qualitative research. The key point

of frame theory is the definition of the frame, from which the thoughts about function and mechanism of action are

brought out, deriving different methods and orientations of frame analysis. Goffman firstly took the frame as the

explanation of individual cognition, which is introduced from the fundamental mode of psychology and applied in

communication situations. He believed that frame is the cognitive structure or orientation in people's mind, through

which people can observe the world, obtain and construct the meaning of things in life. People construct social reality

from one frame to another. Goffman believed, on the one hand, it comes from the previous experience; on the other

hand, it is often under the influence of social and cultural awareness.

When frame theory is applied in media analysis, it forms the concept of news frame. The news selection made by media

under the frame restriction is called news frame effect (D'Angelo and Kuypers, 2010). According to them, (Entman,

1993) put forward that the result of news frame is the news after the process of selection and exclusion. News frame

allows journalists to spread the news efficiently to the public after a quick standard processing of information. Woo

(1994) argued more directly that news frame is the result of interactions among journalist, news source, audience, text

and social contexts. From that perspective, frame concept is directly linked to the process of news production by the

media. Based on different analyses and understandings of the frame theory, both Chinese and overseas researchers of

frame theory focus their attention on the quantitative study in which frame theory explains a particular social

phenomenon, including news production, and uses different methods and orientations of frame analysis, based on which,

other research methods including content analysis, discourse analysis, and symbol analysis are combined, to make a

broad and comprehensive analysis of a certain phenomenon. As for the frame theory in mass communication, Goffman

once said that frame has at least four aspects, that is, transmitter, news text, audience and social culture, according to

which different researchers chose different subjects, on the basis of different methods and orientations of frame analysis,

conducted empirical and applied researchers and made lots of achievements.

Frame theory also analyzes subject about media content. Subjects impact how viewers interpret and affected by the

content (Entman, 1993, Parmelee, 2003, Scheufele, 2000). Frame theory examines that information sender make frames

and context to compose a lot of information into an effective framework so that audiences can comprehend and

understand it more easily (Gamson & Modigliani, 1987). This think can help to explain that how information in

8

crisis event tweets is packaged and prove about media who send them (Parmelee & Bichard, 2012). There are also many

studies have shown that how frame theory are effective and powerful. Tankard (2001) pointed out the advantage of

framing is it can define the term of arguments without people releasing they are occurring. Research showed that how

people's awareness of the issue could be impacted by framed issues (De Vreese, 2004). Therefore, researching on

frames in crisis event posts can make an example of how Weibo and People's Daily reflect key issues on crisis event.

Iyengar and Simon (1993) analyzed thematic and episodic framing categories to investigate news in coverage of the

crisis. In their research, thematic framing refers to construct the category of news in general context, while episode

framing indicates to the context of particular occasions or events. According to the study of Zoch and Milleda (2011),

they stated that frames have four functions for media in term of a crisis event, which are finding the problem, deciding

the source, making a judgment and proposing a solution. Bichard (2006) built up a model for constructing frame within

the context of blog information dissemination. This model is one of the few models, which has researched frames within

social media. In his study, social crisis events involving the Internet include the time, space, theme, topic, and systems.

3. Methodology

This research made a qualitative study of the texts with analysis of frame contents, combining methods of discourse

analysis and content analysis, and made both quantitative and qualitative analysis and study between texts in Weibo and

reports of People’s Daily about the “Tianjin explosion”.

3.1 Timeframes

Since the number of posts on Weibo is the enormous amount of information, for this study, the search period is limited

at one week after the "Tianjin explosion". “Tianjin explosion” happened at around 23:30 on August 12, 2015. The data

were collected for the period from the accident up until two days later to allow for comparison with news media

coverage. So the period from August 12, 2015, to August 20, 2015, is used as sample period in this research.

3.2 Sampling of Weibo

The search query “Tianjin explosion” was entered into the advanced search function of Weibo and the time is limited

from August 12, 2015, to August 20, 2015, I collected the number of 2813849 posts of Weibo in total. Since the search

results are the enormous amount of information, for this study, the information obtained is equidistant random

9

sampling according to the period. First, in days, the search time is divided into eight periods: 12th-13th, 13th-14th, 14th-

15th, 15th-16th, 16th-17th, 17th-18th, 18th-19th, 19th-20th, then for each period is searched for 23, 1566468, 558092,

188729, 169596, 143777, 126006, 61158 posts. In addition, the collected posts are sampled according to the pages in

units. Because only 50 pages posts are displayed each time on Weibo search bar, so in a total of 400 pages posts were

obtained for eight periods. This research selects for the sample of 50 pages. Therefore, systematic sampling of public

distance is 8. After coding the page number of 1 to 10 again, the result of random sampling is No. 7. Therefore, the

number of pages extracted from 50 pages posts in each period is Page 7, 15, 23, 31, 39 and 47. Then 48 pages posts as

the sample are obtained totally. However, 48 pages posts are two pages less than the target sample，according to the

occurrence and development process of “Tianjin explosion”, the rest two sample pages are extracted from the period of

12th -13th and 19th -20th. Finally, a total number of 884 posts analyzed as the sample.

Chart 1: Sina Weibo's posts related to "Tianjin explosion" from 12th to 20th, 2015

3.3 Sampling of People’s Daily

People's Daily Online is People's Daily's official website, on which electronic version of People's Daily is available for

reading and searching. The search query "Tianjin explosion" was entered into the advanced search function of People's

Daily Online and the time is limited from August 12, 2015, to August 20, 2015. 199 pieces of news are searched in total,

removing news reports that are not related to the topic of "Tianjin explosion," 182 pieces of valid news is obtained.

23

1566468

558092

188729169596143777 12600661158

0

200000

400000

600000

800000

1000000

1200000

1400000

1600000

1800000

12-13 13-14 14-15 15-16 16-17 17-18 18-19 19-20

SinaWeibo'spostsrelatedon"Tianjinexplosion"

10

The search results are entirely used to analyze samples in this research.

Time/Day 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Total

Number of

samples/Articles

9 23 27 27 30 21 24 21 182

Proportion/% 1.2 12.6 14.8 14.8 16.5 11.5 13.2 11.5 100

Table 1: People's Daily's articles related to "Tianjin explosion" from 14h to 21th, 2015

3.4 Content analysis

To compare two media, Weibo and People’s Daily, Content analysis, which is the quantitative research method is

considered the effective tool to analyze data for this study. Berelson (1952), who first defined content analysis, pointed

out that content analysis is a research technique, which is the systematic and quantitative description of the content of

communication. And Krippendorff (2013) worked on this domain and proposed that content analysis is a research

method for making duplicable and reasonable arguments from texts to the context of their use and the category selection,

and construction is key elements of analysis. In the methods and principles of category construction. Babbie (1992)

established three principles of category construction, which are fitting the purpose, functionality, and operability. And

Franzosi (2008) pointed out the most important principle of category construction must meet the need of research

questions, followed by confirming the significance and frame of the research. Based on framing and content analysis

theory, this research will do the content analysis of Sina Weibo posts and People’s Daily coverage through constructing

categories of the content.

The category construction of this research is divided into three categories, which are Subject Category, Source Category,

and Communication Form Category.

3.4.1 Subject Category

Subject Category is to categorize the content of communication according to the subject and theme. Research on the

subject of this paper is "Tianjin explosion" public crisis; the research media is Weibo and People's Daily. For this study,

I coded content into four main subjects, which are Dissemination of Disaster Information, Disaster Relief, Disaster

Impact, and Condolence and Mourning. And each main subject contains many sub-subjects. Dissemination of Disaster

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Information contains the (1) real-time disaster information and the casualties, missing information and (2) disaster area,

victims living conditions. Disaster Relief contains (1) the party, government, and military rescue operations, (2)

community assistance and (3) network rescue, mainly Internet users use Weibo and other new media forms, to

participate in disaster relief, donations. Disaster Impact contains (1) the secondary impact of the disaster, including fire,

chemical gas leak, (2) disaster caused by social problems, such as the use of donations and (3) post-reflection, including

the reflection of media, individuals or users on the disaster, the community, and the country. And Condolence and

Mourning contains (1) international mourning, condolences, (2) civil mourning, condolences, including the mourning of

party, government, military, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, overseas Chinese and (3) individuals (including civil,

Internet users) condolences, praying, mourning.

3.4.2 Source Category

The generalized source of information refers to the resources and platforms, which support for information

communication in the progress of information generation. And the narrow sense refers to the source providers, including

organizations, individuals or groups.

The Source Category of this research mainly from two categories, one is the source from Weibo technology platform,

and the other one is the source providers. The first category mainly focuses on Weibo, including the websites of Weibo,

mobile media, and other platforms. And the source providers include the news media, local politicians, national

politicians, victims, international organizations, community groups, individuals, experts and the Internet.

3.4.3 Communication Form Category

The communication form of news reporting mainly is the subject of news, including message, communication, and

comment. And the communication form of Weibo is more diverse, in addition to the texts messages, comments, also

including news texts links, images, and videos. Therefore the communication form category of this research includes the

message, communication, comment, and multimedia.

3.5 Ethical aspects

The ethical issue plays an important role in the dissertation even if low risk or no risk and should be taken into great

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account for the research. All personal data were anonymous. Only tweets from public figures e.g. journalists, politicians

were directly quoted and their authors identified. Members of the public were protected through paraphrasing their

comments and not revealing their usernames. More specifically, when I quoted some Weibo users' public content that

they post, I paraphrased their Weibo content and anonymized their usernames.

All the data and information collected from Weibo and People's Daily Online would be private to secure in the PC with

passwords and in regards to paper-based data would be kept in a record folder alongside the lock until the end of the

dissertation. After the project, all the date and information will be deleted

4. Results and finding

4.1 Subject Category Analysis

In this research, the dissemination situation of Sina Weibo and People’s Daily on four subjects, Dissemination of

disaster information, Disaster Relief, Disaster Impact, and Condolence and Mourning is as follow:

Chart 2: The posts proportion from Sina Weibo in four main subjects

22.40%

14.70%

23.10%

39.80%

SinaWeibo

DisseminationofDisasterInformation

DisasterRelief

DisasterImpact

CondolenceandMourning

13

Chart 3: The article proportion from People’s Daily in four main subjects

From the chart 2 and chart 3, they show the subject-focused point of Sina Weibo and People's Daily on the information

dissemination of the "Tianjin explosion" is different. The information dissemination of Sina Weibo on four subjects

sorted by topic followed Condolence and Mourning, Disaster Impact, Dissemination of Disaster Information and

Disaster Relief. However, the People's Daily reported that in turn focused Disaster Relief, Dissemination of Disaster

Information, Condolence and Mourning to Disaster Impact, which reflects the distinction of the subject between the

traditional mass media, People's Daily and the new representative of the Sina Weibo reporting on the same crisis event

"Tianjin explosion ".

Subject Sub-subject Sina

Weibo/

Posts

Proportio

n/%

People’s

Daily/Arti

cles

Proportion/%

Dissemination

of Disaster

Information

Real-time

disaster

information

115 13 18 9.9

Disaster area

living condition

83 9.4 33 18.1

28%

50%

6% 16%

People'sDaily

DisseminationofDisasterInformation

DisasterRelief

DisasterImpact

CondolenceandMourning

14

Disaster Relief The party,

government,

and military

rescue

22 2.5 68 37.4

Community

assistance

77 8.7 23 12.6

Network rescue 31 3.5 0 0

Disaster Impact Secondary

impact of the

disaster e.g.

fire， chemical

gas leak

15 1.7 4 2.2

Explosion

Analysis

35 4 1 0.5

Impact of social

problem

57 6.4 6 3.3

Post – reflection 97 11 0 0

Condolence and

Mourning

International 10 1.1 10 5.5

Civil 8 0.9 14 7.7

Individuals 334 37.8 5 2.8

Total 884 100 182 100

Table 2: The number of articles, posts and proportion from the People’s Daily and Sina Weibo in each sub-subject

From the table 2, we can see Sina Weibo and People’s Daily both in the specific sub-subject concerned are very

different, details are as follows:

4.1.1 The Dissemination of Disaster Information

The subject of dissemination of disaster information includes real-time disaster information and disaster area living

condition. More specific, the proportion of two respective in the dissemination of disaster information subject was

15

22.4% and 28%. The little difference shows that Sina Weibo and People's Daily both concentrate on it and in the public

crisis event, the transparency and dissemination of disaster information are the focus of attention of the modern media,

detailed information on the disaster itself and disaster area living condition, the two are slightly different.

(1) In contrast, People's Daily was more interested in reporting disaster area living condition while the information that

users posted on Weibo focused more on information in the real-time disaster information.

On the sub-subject of disaster area living condition and information in the real-time disaster information, Sina Weibo

and People's Daily had their emphasis, and Weibo had the better effect on the dissemination of information in the real-

time disaster, the proportion was 13%, and disaster area living condition accounted for 9.4%. When the crisis broke out,

the Internet has become one of the main channels for people to obtain information, Weibo as an open information

platform, has become the increasingly important information distribution center for the crisis.

The proportion of real-time disaster of People's Daily was 9.9%, while the percentage of disaster area living condition

was almost the twice than it, accounted for 18.1% of the total amount of information. As Party Central Committee's

(CPC) official newspaper, although releasing reliable disaster information is its main responsibilities, playing its

political role often function more. In the sample, the dissemination of disaster area living condition mainly reflected on

reporting on normal and stable life in a disaster area. For example, People's Daily reported on 13 August 2015 that the

temporary settlements live news "Primary school serves as the shelter for victims of Tianjin Blast."

(2) The dissemination situation of Weibo and People’s Daily released information of disaster was quite consistent,

except that Weibo preferred to use multimedia in contrast.

On disaster information release, the two media published information both through the way of the short message and

flash. And the information mainly included the number of casualties and detailed data about property damage. However,

because that Weibo is subject to 140-character limit, the message is shorter. And People's Daily can be used with an

extended communication, sustained attention and interpretation while Weibo can only through the distribution network

news links to achieve sustainable, depth of coverage. For instance, a Weibo user posted a tweet in the early morning of

the August 13, "Around 23:30 on 12 August, the huge explosion happened in Tianjin Tanggu! Visually the Northeast in

Newport area, close to Tianjin port. Hope not to have casualties, but also do what chemicals explode. Extremely

explosion, the shock wave shook the floor several times, ears has pressure sensitive, and there was a large mushroom

cloud. " According to this post, the word count was not more than 100 words, and the blogger just made a simple

description of the explosion, besides the authenticity of this post is difficult to tell. However, also on releasing the real-

time disaster information, People's Daily could use longer length to report the event in details. For example,

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People's Daily issued the news "Tianjin Explosion Caused by Combustible and Explosive Goods in Container" on

August 13, "Chemicals at a container terminal exploded in Binhai New Area in Tianjin, China at 11:30 pm Wednesday.

The cause was the combustible and explosive goods in the container. In the video, huge mushroom cloud and fire can be

seen far off. It is reported that quakes can be felt 10 kilometers away. The injured are now rushed to the nearby hospital.

Casualties yet remain unknown."

On information dissemination of disaster area living condition, People's Daily continually takes advantage of traditional

mass media depth reports. In all 33 pieces of reports on disaster area living condition, in which there were 26 pieces of

communications reports with more words and detailed description. However, because Weibo has the limitation of the

text word, on the alphanumeric text information cannot be compared, Weibo often relies on pictures, videos, web links

and other multimedia tools to complete the dissemination of information. Moreover, in the description of disaster area

living condition, making use of multimedia is more image, concrete and easier to accept than using text.

4.1.2 Disaster Relief

(1) Disaster Relief was People’s Daily the most important reported topic, while Weibo reported on this subject was

relatively few.

People’s Daily reported on the disaster relief accounted for 50% of all reports, compared to Weibo, just 14.7%.

Chwiałkowska (2012) also showed that survival of the positive attitude is the mainstream of mental state in times of

crisis. Therefore, reporting on Disaster Relief topic positively in the event of a catastrophic crisis could have a good

effect on encouraging people and maintaining social stability. Because traditional mass media needs to set agenda, it

tends to emphasize the function of media's political and social responsibility, thus the choose of reported topics is after

several deliberations and discussions and presented in front of the audience of the mass media is often carefully

constructed. Therefore, People's Daily regarded “disaster relief” as the first reporting subject is not surprising.

Generally, after public crisis events occurring, government dominates the whole disaster relief operation, social

organizations and groups are the important force in support of disaster and individual grasps the least social resources.

(2) In “Disaster relief” sub-subject, People’s Daily concentrated more on official relief operations, while Weibo focused

more on civil relief.

In the three sub-subjects, the party, government, military rescue operations, community assistance and network rescue,

People’s Daily mainly reported on the party, government, military relief operations, which accounted a high percentage

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all reports, up to 37.4%, of which the party were most frequently mentioned, especially party leaders. The reports on

community assistance accounted for 12.6% of all reports and there were none reports on network rescue.

As CPC's official newspaper, timely and accurately reflecting the official voice of the relief action is the main

responsibility. Such reports mainly reflect on determination, measures, actions, and deeds of the CPC, government

(including the provinces, autonomous regions, and ministries, etc.) and military during the disaster relief. In specific

reports, there were reports reflected on CPC and national leaders deploying disaster relief activities. Such as "Together

with the people - Leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Li Keqiang as prime minister to carry out

documentary Tianjin explosion relief", "Chinese leaders urge all-out efforts to save injured in Tianjin blast". Reflecting

the government reports had "Well-organized government" Reflecting the military reports had "Firefighter saved from

the blast site concerned about the safety of his comrades." Reflecting the basic Party reports had "Tianjin organizations

at all levels and Party members are struggling to disaster relief," "200 Air Forces Personnel Arrive In Tianjin for

Emergency Relief Efforts."

Reports on community assistance also concentrated reflection of social groups and organizations, large-owned

enterprises, foreign enterprises, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, overseas Chinese with an official background, etc.

Such as the Beijing Federation of Trade Unions, China Association of Poverty Alleviation and Development, China

Three Gorges Corporation, Samsung, McDonald's, etc. Reports on disaster relief serve to promote the party and

government behavior, social stability and public sentiment, unity, patriotism and love of emotional homeland

sublimation, and many other effects.

Weibo, on the contrary, the dissemination of information in the party, government, and military relief operations was in

the least, only 2.5% of all information. And community assistance, network rescue operations accounted for 8.7%, 3.5%,

and more than the percentage of the party, government, and military relief operations. Particular note is that Weibo has

become a network rescue platform and created a Weibo rescue ways. Many users can release the disaster information,

the victims of the disaster situation or initiate Weibo donations via Weibo and by users' reposting and comment,

increasing the dissemination effects so that online behavior coming to reality. For example, when a Shanghai Internet

user and other volunteers rushed to the disaster area, they found the southeast corner of Tianjin pot was hard hit, as well

as the residual chemical gasses released and did not get any relief resources and media attention, temporary was relief

blind spot. So they posted a tweet for help on Sina Weibo. Under concerted efforts of Weibo users, this helping tweet

was reposted over hundreds of times, and finally, China International Rescue Team had received information showed on

Weibo and had been transferred to the front of the rescue team.

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Another example, one rescue team official Weibo posted a tweet on 14 August "the disaster is desperately short of

supplies: tents, masks, drugs, mineral water, instant noodles, and clothing. Please pack all your own items, paste the

items' name and number. Please keep donated clothes clean and drugs must have regular pharmacy invoices to ensure

drug safety." This tweet immediately had become influential among Weibo users. Over the next two days, Weibo users

launched and raised desperately short of supplied for disaster area though Weibo, used Weibo platform to integrate their

social resources. Someone contacted aircraft, someone was responsible for transportation of materials and someone

contacted in front of the disaster areas and exchanged information. On 14 August, there was a Weibo user posting a

tweet "We are at Capital Airport Terminal One North Line Freight Station to collect relief supplies at 4 pm. At present

we need clothes, masks, tents, bottled water…" and they left their contact details. Several hours later, with the help of

Weibo users, the original blogger declared that they had successfully raised eight tons of relief supplies. 4 tons supplies

have been exceeded the amount of an aircraft in the former plan.

In the crisis event “Tianjin explosion”, Weibo has become a timely and effective platform for help and rescue. The rapid

dissemination of information and self-organization ability make rescue information can get quickly respond. Weibo

offered an effective platform for the individual and non-government organization to release information, to some extent

shaken the government's leading role in disaster relief.

4.1.3 Disaster Impact

In Weibo, the information of disaster impact accounted for 23.1% of all information, the second only to condolence and

mourning information. Disaster impact were not People' Daily ‘s key reports, and the percentage was only 6% of all

reports. In particular sub-subject, Weibo mainly focused on two aspects of post-reflection and impact of the social

problem, which accounting for 11% and 6.4% respectively of all information, followed by explosion analysis and

secondary impact of the disaster, which was 4% and 1.7%. People's Daily concentrated on the social problems, such as

the use of donations and secondary impact of post-disaster. There was only one report about explosion analysis and no

report about the post-disaster reflection of public opinion.

Disaster impact has become Weibo's main focus of the dissemination content, while People's Daily was the relative lake

of this reports. To a certain extent, it showed that Weibo as the new media had taken the place of People's Daily's

accountability function on disaster impact. All the 11 articles about disaster impact of People's Daily released that

focused on the safety of people in disaster areas. Wherein the five reports reflected that leakage of chemicals after the

19

explosion. Such as "Cyanide did not pollute the air outside the quarantine and water" and "Experts say the site does not

have to generate "nerve gas" conditions." The rest six reports mainly showed explosive economic losses. For example,

"Almost ten thousand new cars ruined in Tianjin blasts". In addition, People's Daily did not report any problems that

involving members of public required to public post-disaster information transparently. For instance, the information of

explosion details, explosion safety accountability, illegal storage of hazardous materials on the responsibility and other

information. Weibo's dissemination of information on disaster impact was more fully. Weibo played an important role

in the dissemination of defrauding the donation, how to use the donations, environmental pollution discussions. For

example, on August 13, one Weibo user posted a tweet to claim that her dad worked in the disaster area and after the

explosion, she lost contact with his father. After that, she posted her own bank card information. Then her Weibo had

been the widespread concern of many users and won the 3739 Weibo users total 3856 donations, worth a total of

96576.44 yuan. After that, the account of the original blogger was complaint due to releasing false information. Weibo

administrator shut her account on August 14, 2015. And on August 18, 3856 donations had fully been refunded to

Weibo users. It reflected that when involving public opinion, the more sensitive topics, citizens, and other users are

using Weibo to issue on many problems of different opinions and views through its massive information updates and

publishing speed. And to some extent, it was closer to the truth of events as opposed to traditional media.

4.1.4 Condolence and Mourning

Condolence and mourning were one of the most important aspects of dissemination of information in the crisis event

"Tianjin explosion". According to the main body of condolence, it mainly included international, civil and individual

condolence and praying. On this dissemination of content, 39.8"% of all its information was related to condolence and

mourning. There were 16% reports on it in People's Daily. In particular, Weibo emphasized on individual mourning and

praying. 37.8% of all information was about individual (mostly Internet users) mourning and praying. The content of

international and civil mourning together accounted for only 1.9%. People's Daily, on the contrary, the main reporting

content was civil and international mourning, accounting for 7.7% and 5.5% respectively. There were only five reports

about individual mourning, accounting for only 2.8%.

(1) The phenomenon that individual mourning and praying was the main dissemination information and had a direct

relationship with Weibo users.

There were nearly forty percent of posts about Internet users mourning and condolence. It showed that after the

explosion happening, the spirit and mentality of Internet users were sympathy and concern for disaster area, as for

20

general public were for disaster itself with the more prominent national sentiment. On the dissemination of this subject,

the content of posts had colloquial, fragmentation and multimedia features. Firstly, colloquial language was very

obvious, which fitted with content fragmentation. Because of the low threshold of Weibo platform information

publishing requirements, a large number of Internet users used colloquial and fragmented language. The nature of its

features is popular culture behind new media users. For example, there was a Weibo user posting a praying tweet

"Tianjin, What a beautiful harbor, how rich the city, why an explosion makes you in a state of devastation. Disaster is

relentless, but love is full of Tianjin. Let us pray for Tianjin. Tonight we all are Tianjin people." A large number of

similar individual users' praying and mourning words were full of Weibo, occupying a substantial proportion of Weibo

content. Secondly, Internet users in addition to using words to express pray and mourn, but also extensive use of

pictures, audio, video, web links and other forms of multimedia. Multimedia is one of the prominent features of the

Internet since its birth and is also a major advent of the new media (Fazio et al., 2005). Therefore, the use of multimedia

in praying and mourning discourse makes the expression of information is more impressive and more emotional effect.

(2) In the People’s Daily reports, the subject of condolence and mourning was civil mourning and international

friendship condolence and mourning.

There were only two reports about individual mourning, which directly quoted Weibo users' mourning and praying

discourse. It reflected the influence and widespread of Weibo in coverage of mourning. Although People Daily reported

few articles about condolence and mourning, those reports involved a more comprehensive subject of condolence and

mourning. There were reports about mourning of national leadership and the government, such as "President Xi Jinping

and other eight members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central

Committee paid a silent tribute to victims of Tianjin explosion." There were also reports involved netizens, individual

religious person, such as "Netizens around the world extend condolences over deadly explosions in Tianjin " and

"Scandal-Plagued Shaolin Temple Abbot Leads Prayer Ceremony for Tianjin Blast Victims." Moreover, there were

reports involved mourning of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, overseas Chinese, foreign institutions. In addition,

reporter's note, critiques also had been reported. Even of which directly quoted Weibo users' mourning and praying

discourse. People's Daily reported subject comprehensively, the diversification of report form was more outstanding,

which represented the party newspaper in disaster relief the embodiment of political, publicity function.

4.2 Source Category Analysis

21

This research refers news source to investigate the difference between Weibo and traditional mass media in coverage of

source framework.

4.2.1 Weibo technology platform

Users not only can log in through traditional Internet but also through mobile phones, instant messaging, external API,

e-mail and other means. Especially with the development of 3G, 4G mobile communication technologies, Weibo has

become a connection platform to open up the Internet and mobile communications. Therefore, the information

dissemination is very convenient. The diverse distribution channels, anytime and anywhere ability to communicate

information of Weibo, making Weibo have the huge advantage that the traditional media cannot match. Thus, the

technology platform of Weibo publishing text has naturally become an important category of text sources. The source

analysis of Weibo technology platform in the sample of dissemination of "Tianjin explosion " is as follows：

Chart 4: The proportion of Weibo’ posts from three technology platform

From the chart 4, all posts of Weibo distributed in three technology platforms, 50% were from Weibo website itself,

there were 38% relying on mobile phones or other mobile media. 12% published related information of "Tianjin

explosion" through other platforms. The above data illustrates that Weibo users release posts mainly through Weibo

50%

38%

12%

SinaWeibo

SinaWeibowebsite

Mobilemedia

Otherpla=orms

22

website. Internet users initiative enter Weibo website to release information, pass information, which is the main source

of information for the current Weibo information.

According to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) 37 times the Internet report, as of December 2015,

the number of Internet users in China reached 688 million scales, the Internet penetration rate was 50.3%, of which the

scale of mobile phone users was up to 620 million, the proportion of mobile phone users in all Internet users was 90%.

At the same time, the report also released that in 2015, the scale of domestic Weibo users reached up to 2.1 billion

people, the penetration rate of Internet users was 33.5%, and mobile phone users in the use of Weibo reached 42.2%.

This data scaling basically reflected the proportion that people relied on mobile media to release posts. According to the

analysis of samples, the mobile media platform in this study mainly referred to Sina Weibo mobile version, the mobile

news network and other 3G, 4G mobile phone applications.

The biggest difference Weibo compared to the blog, BBS, SNS and other new media is that Weibo is open to other

platforms, making the different client and web applications can be linked. Through analysis of samples, the other

platforms of samples had S60 clients, Sina News Center, Youku, Tudou, Android client, MSN robot, Ku6, blog plug-ins

and another related blog. Its network interface both had video, audio, blog and a variety of clients. Weibo just used

massive, all- inclusive network information to integrate a variety of information resources and build a platform for the

Internet information flow. Currently, the combination of mobile communication technology and Weibo, breaking the

interval between the Internet and mobile communications, promoting Weibo become one of the mobile communication

platforms for information dissemination. In addition, Weibo is open to other platforms so that Weibo has immediacy,

convenience, and information dissemination fission characteristics.

4.2.2 Source provider

The source providers in this study are divided into ten categories: news media, government ministries and police,

victims, international organizations, leaders, community groups, individuals, experts, the internet and other. Through

analysis of samples, specifically are as follows:

Sources Sina

Weibo/Posts

Proportion/% People’s Daily/

Articles

Proportion/%

News media 37 4.2 7 3.8

23

Government

ministries and

police

21 2.4 68 37.7

Victims 44 5 25 13.7

International

organizations

6 0.7 8 4.4

Leaders 5 0.6 30 16.5

Community

groups

15 1.7 25 13.7

Individuals 468 52.7 15 8.2

Experts 14 1.6 1 0.5

Internet 273 31 2 1

Other 1 0.1 1 0.5

Total 884 100 182 100

Table 3: The number of articles, posts and proportion from the People’s Daily and Sina Weibo in source providers

From the table 3, the source providers of Weibo were from individuals (mainly from internet users) and Internet these

two aspects. The two main source providers occupied for 52.7% and 31% respectively, together accounting for 83.7% of

the total amount of all the information. While the first source providers of People's Daily were government ministries

and police, followed by leaders. Both together accounted for 54.2% of all the information. At the same time, community

groups and victim both accounted for 13.7%, which were also important sources of information.

(1) The source providers of Weibo were relative single, and People’s Daily were much more diverse.

The source providers of Weibo mostly were individuals and Internet information, and the news media, government

ministries and police, victims, international organizations, leaders, community groups, experts accounted for only a

slight part. It reflected that as the application form of the Internet, Weibo has obvious individual characteristics. Unlike

traditional media, Internet users release information always from what they have seen and heard and without any

obvious source. However, this also reflected the weak authenticity and authority of Weibo information.

The source providers of People's Daily were the government ministries, police, and leaders, on the one hand, this was

decided by People's Daily's the official mainstream newspaper status. One the other hand, in a public crisis event, occurs,

had reliable, the authority of the government departments, leaders, and other official sources generally become one

24

of the main channels used by domestic media. And the audiences generally are more willing to accept the authority of

government information. Therefore, the voice from government and leaders was much more than community groups

and individuals when reporting domestic public crisis event.

With the change of the domestic environment media, traditional media reports from crisis events had greater

improvement. They gradually begin to pay close attention to the affected groups and other individual voice rather than

focusing on government propaganda mode. This requires the choice of sources to juggle multiple information sources

and the balance of the good news source. The diversifications of sources can avoid subjective or false report that led to a

single source, so that ensure the reports true.

(2) Weibo information was much more grassroots, People’s Daily information tended to be more authoritative.

The so-called "grassroots" refers to the news that plays an active role when individually is in the process of collecting,

reporting, analysis and dissemination of information news. It is a news type that ordinary individuals are as the main

news event reported. And Weibo characteristics and dissemination mechanism make the individual especially Internet

users can play an important role in the process of participation in the dissemination of information. Firstly, Weibo as the

information release platform has the vast amount of information and strong social networks. A lot of professional news

media workers joined Weibo to get news clues in the powerful information flow. According to the data from Sina Tech

in October 2015, there was 14.2% of the traffic flow towards to the news and media websites, 52% of which flowed to

print media websites. However, it is more convenient for individuals to use Weibo to present the fact to public than

news agencies. The presented information tends to be highly fragmented and lack of rigorous system carding and

analysis. The mass media shows the overall appearance and truth of the events with the use of interviews and

infestations. Thus with the interpretation of information and discretion, laid the prominent advantages of the mass media

on the authority, credibility, which is incomparable for the general users. At the same time, the traditional media has

high hopes for Weibo. Yantai Daily Media Group, as the first traditional media to open and login Sina Weibo, opened a

Weibo account named "YMG Radio Network" on November 4, 2009（Sina Tech, 2010）. Since then including “South

Weekend”, “New Weekly”, Phoenix Satellite TV, Central People's Broadcasting music radio and other major

mainstream newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations have opened up their own Sina Weibo accounts. The

traditional media use Weibo platform for dissemination of their information or to provide tools to connect and absorb

users, meanwhile, a lot of information of Weibo is no longer isolated information text.

4.3 Communication Form Category

25

This research will analysis three main forms of news reports, which are the message, communication, and comment.

Besides, any form of information dissemination way that contains images or video or network links will be coded as

multimedia. On this basis, specific analysis of the sample is as follows:

Chart 5: The post proportion from Sina Weibo in communication form

Chart 6: The article proportion from People’s Daily’s in communication form

4.3.1 Message

The message here refers to the news of reporting theme, which paying attention to the facts information itself and telling

the audience the happening of the core elements such as time, place, characters and generally does not directly criticize

to minimize the disseminator subjective color. According to the chart 5 and chart 6, the main reporting form of People's

20%

49%0%

31%

SinaWeibo

Message

CommunicaDon

Comment

MulDmedia

57%

6%

21%

16%

People'sDaily

Message

CommunicaDon

Comment

MulDmedia

26

Daily was the message, accounting for 57% of the total sample, and the message on Weibo was for the proportion of

20%. The message of People's Daily mainly includes newsletters, dynamic news, and comprehensive news. Because of

the timeliness requirements, the average length is shorter, and the content is relative single. The dissemination of

disaster information as the second reporting content of People's Daily, most of the reporting form was the message.

People's Daily timely released dynamic authority disaster, rescue operation, and other information immediately after the

explosion relief process, so that the audience at the first can be informed of the disaster information and the message had

the higher degree of transparency. The message of Weibo although is limited to 140 characters in the word count, the

basic mode of dissemination is the same as the People's Daily, which is both based on the clear facts, such as the

disaster, rescue operation so that have a good dissemination effect.

4.3.2 Comment

Comment in this study refers to a form of communication that individuals or media make opinions, views or arguments

for problems or events of general significance. The comment of Weibo is mainly opinions, evaluations, and discussions

that published by the public individual. And the comment in new reports generally includes editorial commentaries,

press notices, reviews, commentary columns and others. From the chart 5 and chart 6, the comment was the main form

of Weibo information dissemination, accounting for 49% of all information. There was two main types comment in

People's Daily, commentaries and commentator's articles, accounting for 6% of the total sample. This showed that

compared to Weibo, traditional media tend to use fewer comment because of the requirements of true of news reports.

Since Weibo information is with strong characteristics of privacy and fragmentation. Individuals tend to make

comments, evaluations, and opinions on public events or problems. Therefore, Weibo often becomes a distribution

center for public opinion. Especially for the topics which are sensitive design and difficult to intervene for official media,

individual citizens can express their own views and comments via Weibo, becoming a grassroots discourse publishing

platform.

4.3.3 Communication

In this research, communication means long type news reports. Communication for timeliness requirements is no high,

but pursues excavating depth logic, value and meaning of human nature and so on behind the news. According to

sample analysis, due to Weibo is restricted by its dissemination words, platform and form, there was none

27

communication tweet. However, the communications become the peculiar form of paper media. There was a total of 38

articles of People's Daily in the form of communication, accounting for 21% of all reports. For example, "Profound

lessons must be learned from Tianjin blasts: Chinese leaders", "Sodium cyanide in Tianjin to be collected, neutralized

soon" and "Commentary: A Safer Tomorrow is the Best Way to Commemorate the Dead." The theme of the People's

Daily communication reports was various, both national leaders, as well as the general public. Reports from the point of

view of disaster relief as the theme, emphasizing the whole country, the central to local worked together in harmony and

united. It's propaganda framework, and emotional incentive framework was more apparent, depth to describe the scene,

dynamic, and action of disaster relief, to some extent made up for the deficiency of the message form.

4.3.4 Multimedia

This study defined, in the dissemination crisis event "Tianjin explosion", if there was any form of the picture, video,

audio and network links included in the text, and the communication form is defined as multimedia. From the chart 5,

multimedia was Weibo the second communication form of information dissemination, accounting for 31% of all

information. Multimedia feature of the Internet is one of the advantages compared to traditional media. Internet

technologies tend to integrate pictures, audio, video, network links and other communication forms, making the modern

media to Omni media era. Weibo inherited the advantages of multimedia communication, tends to use more this

communication form in information dissemination and has an effective communication effect. For example, a Weibo

user posted a tweet on 13 August, "Tianjin blast site came muffed and smoke again. At 14:45 on 13 August, yellow

smoke appeared at the scene and had a big difference from black and white smoke before. " Besides the text, the blogger

also posted nine pictures of the scene and a short video, and also put a link to the original video website. This tweet

included three forms of multimedia, pictures, video and network link. Text part gave a short description of what

happening. And the pictures and video can directly reflect the situation of the scene, which can give readers more

profound impression and let them intuitively know the situation of the scene. In People's Daily, there were 30 articles of

photo reports or reports containing the photo. These also were defined as multimedia, accounting for 16% of the total

information. Compared to Weibo, the multimedia form of People's Daily is limited, only pictures. Meanwhile, the age of

multimedia promoted newspaper and other traditional media to pay more attention to the use of pictures, network, video

and other multimedia forms, especially on the use of photo and reports, to attract the attention of the audience.

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5. Discussion and conclusion

This article draws the following conclusions through a framework analysis of the text contents of the information

transmitted by Sina Weibo and People’s Daily in their reports of “Tianjin explosion”.

5.1 Things the two media have in common

(1) Attaching importance to the transmission of the disaster situation

During Tianjin Explosion, the percentages of information on disaster situation transmitted by Sina Weibo and People’s

Daily are nearly the same. At present, the Internet has become one of the major channels for people to acquire

information when an emergent crisis event occurs. Being an open information platform, Weibo has increasingly become

an important information collection and distribution center for emergent crises. As an official newspaper of the

Communist Party of China (CPC), People's Daily has a more vital role in fulfilling the political function despite its main

duty of disclosing authoritative information on the disaster situation. These all reflect the importance attached to

information on the disaster itself by the modern media during public crises.

According to the People's Republic of China Ordinance on Openness of Government Information which went into effect

on May 1st, 2008, the emphasis of information release should include the information on advanced planning for dealing

with emergencies and public events and the information on early warning and response; information on the management

and use and circumstances of allocation for emergency rescues and disaster relief work, veteran benefits, social relief,

charity contributions and other funds should also be released timely and transparently. Meanwhile, along with the

changes in the media environment, particularly the emergence of internet-based new media, there has been a major leap

in the development of the channels and approaches of the public's access to media. Moreover, the public's awareness of

the right to know has been gradually increasing. In addition, western journalistic professionalism's influence on China's

traditional media has also facilitated the progress made in media communication regarding information openness.

(2) Similar ways of event propagation

One type of news reports focuses on the truth of events, and this way of transmission is also adopted in the information

release of Weibo. Laying stress on the truth of the event, they both tend to inform the audience of the core elements of

the event which include time, location, and people, avoid direct comments in general and minimize the transmitter's

personal feelings. The requirement of timeliness determines that these reports are basically short with simple contents.

As the second largest subject, disaster situation is mostly transmitted in the report form of news. Closely following

29

the rescue process after the explosion, People's Daily released authoritative dynamics of the disaster situation and rescue

operation in time, allowing receivers to get the information on the disaster-stricken area without delay and gaining high-

level transparency. Although the news released by Sina Weibo and People's Daily are restricted by the upper limit of

140 characters, their ways of information release are basically the same with authentic and transparent information on

disaster situation and rescue operation as the principal content, achieving propagation effect.

5.2 Contrast-based conclusions

(1) While Sina Weibo is featured by emotional expression in transmission, People’s Daily prioritizes information

transparency

Based on the research background of this article, Weibo has played a significant role as an information platform during

Tianjin Explosion, and its influence is manifested in the real-time information spreading and the huge swirl of public

opinion in the emergent public event. According to sample analysis, information transmitted on Sina Weibo during

Tianjin Explosion is mainly netizens’ subjective emotional expression and release, which are reactions to the disastrous

crisis. In terms of information transparency, the core content of People’s Daily reports is principally demonstrated in

data, dynamics, and measures. Specifically, it covers the situation of the explosion, casualties, property loss,

authoritative release of information on disaster response and relief, total amount and use of donation, secondary disaster,

life and work in the disaster-stricken area, and social stability, showing high-level information transparency. As the

official newspaper of the CPC, People’s Daily regards information disclosure as one of its principal functions and stands

out in the openness of information through releasing information timely, accurately, and authoritatively. Particularly

regarding topics, which involve national peace and unity and social stability, it is a major information platform for

official disclosure, and the information it releases represents the voice of the Party and the government.

(2) Sina Weibo mainly spreads information on individuals’ condolence, mourning, and post-disaster impacts, while

People’s Daily highlights disaster response and relief.

Nearly 40% of the posts on Sina Weibo are individual netizens’ blessing, condolence, and mourning which have the

colloquial, fragmented, and multimedia-based characteristics. As the former two are directly interrelated, the last one is

determined by the fact that Weibo is an Internet application platform. In essence, these features indicate new media

users’ grassroots nature and the mass culture behind it. During Tianjin Explosion event, Weibo users’ personal

expression of emotion, public figures’ general sympathy and concern for the disaster area, patriotism, and national

30

sentiments all together constituted the general psychological traits in society after the occurrence of the disastrous event.

In sharp contrast to Sina Weibo, half of the reports of People’s Daily are about disaster response and relief. Owing to the

agenda setting, traditional media emphasize political function and social responsibility. Thus, they tend to present the

receivers a virtual reality elaborately constructed by mass media in their reports. Moreover, as positive topics on disaster

response and relief serve to inspire people and maintain social stability in disastrous events, it is the normal logical

choice for People’s Daily to regard disaster response and relief as the topic of primary reports.

(3) Information released on Sina Weibo mostly comes from netizens and the Internet as there is no diversified source of

information, while People’s Daily reports are primarily official news complemented by multiple sources of information.

In terms of the source of information, Sina Weibo and People’s Daily have their own notable preferences. The majority

of messages posted on Sina Weibo are from individual netizens and the Internet, reflecting the we-media feature of

Weibo as a form of the Internet application. By contrast, news released by People’s Daily is provided by the government,

military police, and leaders. Moreover, being influenced by journalistic professionalism, it also considers other

information sources to achieve balance, contributing to the feature of diversification.

The biggest differences between the new and traditional media are liberalization and the feature of we media. Different

from the traditional media, which have official news as the principal source of information, new media represented by

Weibo has the general public as the information publisher. Since these individuals mostly share what they see or hear,

there is a lack of traditional media’s rigorous inspection and agenda setting, finally resulting in the poor authenticity and

authority of information.

(4) Sina Weibo plays the role of supervision by public opinions in its information dissemination, while People’s Daily

involves little of that as it persistently sticks to the function of publicity.

As one part of the social system, the medium has a huge social influence. It is because of this great role in shaping the

society that rulers of any society would control and guide the media based on their political, economic, and cultural

needs. Hence, while publishing news reports, the traditional media cannot be free from the limitation and restriction of

political, economic, and cultural factors. Differently, with the interactive and real-time characteristics, new media has

the certain freedom in this respect compared with the traditional media.

After “Tianjin explosion” occurred, the public generally requested to know about the open and transparent details of

donation use and accident accountability. In this context, Weibo is closer to the truth of affairs compared with the

traditional media because it could express different opinions and views on negative themes and sensitive topics with its

massive information updating and quick release speed.

31

Under the influence of the traditional political publicity, disaster-related reports of People’s Daily have disaster response

and relief as the theme and serving the political party and the government as the starting point and final purpose.

Consequently, they involve little post-disaster reflection, responsibility investigation, and supervision by public opinions.

Overseas media have the tradition of reflection in their reports of disasters. They not only discuss responsibility

investigation but also clearly point out who should be responsible and the approaches to improvement, contributing to

the higher level of supervision by public opinions. Therefore in many cases, the Internet has filled in the blank left by

the traditional media in this field in China.

(5) New media represented by Weibo have the obvious advantages of the technology platform and citizen journalism,

while traditional media represented by People’s Daily are superior in authority and credibility. They two are mutually

beneficial and complementary.

The convenience, timeliness, fission-like diffusion, and interaction of Weibo rely on the advanced technology platform

and open mobile communication technology. Through breaking the barriers between the internet, mobile

communication, and the application client, Weibo becomes one of the platforms for information release via mobile

communication. It serves as a powerful information release and public opinion gathering center in public crises like

Tianjin Explosion and changes the mode and form of the traditional news release to a large extent, making citizen

journalism possible.

Although individuals can spread facts to the public through Weibo more quickly than news agencies, the information

they disseminate tends to be highly fragmented for lack of strict systematic summary and analysis. By comparison, mass

media can present the overall situation and truth through institutionalized interviews and investigations. Hence, with its

right to explain and process information, they have the salient strengths of high-level authority and credibility, which

cannot be matched by the general Weibo users.

Thus, the contradiction between the two can be reconciled and coordinated. As an information release platform, Weibo

possesses a massive amount of information and a powerful social relation network, so lots of professional news media

workers have joined it to acquire news clues among the enormous information flow. In addition, as traditional media

also have high expectations for Weibo, mainstream newspapers, magazines, radios, and televisions have opened their

Weibo accounts, including Southern Weekly and New Weekly. Besides, Portal webs like People.cn and ifeng.com have

also registered on Weibo. Traditional media make use of the Weibo as a platform to spread their information and

provide tools and links to attract users. Furthermore, many information clues posted on Weibo are no longer isolated

information texts as they can be detected and transmitted by the traditional media which in turn can avoid being

32

passive in gathering news leads, indicating the reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation of the two.

33

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Appendix

Appendix 1: The number of articles, posts and proportion from the People’s Daily and Sina Weibo in four main

subjects

Subject Sina Weibo/

Posts

Proportion/% People’s

Daily/%

Proportion/%

Dissemination

of Disaster

Information

198 22.4 51 28

Disaster Relief 130 14.7 91 50

Disaster Impact 204 23.1 11 6

Condolence and

Mourning

352 39.8 29 16

Total 884 100 182 100

Appendix 2: The number of posts and proportion from Sina Weibo in three technology platforms

Technology platform Number Proportion /%

Sina Weibo website 442 50

Mobile media 336 38

API interface 104 12

Total 884 100

Appendix 3: The number of articles, posts and proportion from the People’s Daily and Sina Weibo in

communication forms

Communication

forms

Sina

Weibo/Posts

Proportion/% People’s

Daily/Articles

Proportion/%

Message 176 20 103 57

Communication 434 49 11 6

Comment 0 0 38 21

38

Multimedia 274 31 30 16

Total 884 100 182 100

Appendix 4: Ethic Form

Application 009671

Section A: Applicant detailsSection A: Applicant details

Created:

Mon 13 June 2016 at 12:52

First name:

Danting

Last name:

Wan

Email:

dwan1@sheffield.ac.uk

Programme name:

Information Management

Module name:

Dissertation

Last updated:

21/06/2016

Department:

Information School

Date application started:

Mon 13 June 2016 at 12:52

Applying as:

Undergraduate / Postgraduate taught

Research project title:

The analysis frame of transmitting Public crisisï¼2015 Tianjin explosion in Sina Weibo

Section B: Basic informationSection B: Basic information

1. Supervisor(s)

Name Email

Paul Reilly p.j.reilly@sheffield.ac.uk

39

40

41

42

Appendix 5: Approval Letter

43

Appendix 6 Access to Dissertation

A Dissertation submitted to the University may be held by the Department (or School) within which the Dissertation was undertaken and made available for borrowing or consultation in accordance with University Regulations.

Requests for the loan of dissertations may be received from libraries in the UK and overseas. The Department may also receive requests from other organisations, as well as individuals. The conservation of the original dissertation is better assured if the Department and/or Library can fulfill such requests by sending a copy. The Department may also make your dissertation available via its web pages.

In certain cases where confidentiality of information is concerned, if either the author or the supervisor so requests, the Department will withhold the dissertation from loan or consultation for the period specified below. Where no such restriction is in force, the Department may also deposit the Dissertation in the University of Sheffield Library.

44

To be completed by the Author – Select (a) or (b) by placing a tick in the appropriate box

If you are willing to give permission for the Information School to make your dissertation available in these ways, please complete the following: √ (a) Subject to the General Regulation on Intellectual Property, I, the author, agree to this dissertation being

made immediately available through the Department and/or University Library for consultation, and for the Department and/or Library to reproduce this dissertation in whole or part in order to supply single copies for the purpose of research or private study

(b) Subject to the General Regulation on Intellectual Property, I, the author, request that this dissertation be withheld from loan, consultation or reproduction for a period of [ ] years from the date of its submission. Subsequent to this period, I agree to this dissertation being made available through the Department and/or University Library for consultation, and for the Department and/or Library to reproduce this dissertation in whole or part in order to supply single copies for the purpose of research or private study

Name Danting Wan

Department Information Management

Signed Danting Wan Date 01/09/2016

To be completed by the Supervisor – Select (a) or (b) by placing a tick in the appropriate box

(a) I, the supervisor, agree to this dissertation being made immediately available through the Department and/or University Library for loan or consultation, subject to any special restrictions (*) agreed with external organisations as part of a collaborative project.

*Specialrestrictions

(b) I, the supervisor, request that this dissertation be withheld from loan, consultation or reproduction for a period of [ ] years from the date of its submission. Subsequent to this period, I, agree to this dissertation being made available through the Department and/or University Library for loan or consultation, subject to any special restrictions (*) agreed with external organisations as part of a collaborative project

Name

Department

Signed Date

THIS SHEET MUST BE SUBMITTED WITH DISSERTATIONS BY DEPARTMENTAL REQUIREMENTS.

Appendix 7

Information School Address & First Employment Destination Details

Name:

Programme:

Registration No:

CONFIRMATION OF ADDRESS The University student record system has the capability to record up to three different addresses for you at any one time: HOME address, TERM-TIME address and CORRESPONDENCE address.

Please note that the University and the School will use the details on your HOME address record when posting out information to you, e.g. Statement of Results, Notification of Degree Results, Degree Ceremony information etc. It is therefore YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to ensure this address

45

information is up to date so that communications we post to you get to you.

However, if you know that you will be staying at a temporary/other address rather than your home address after completing the programme, and you wish correspondence to be sent to this temporary/other address it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to add the address details to the CORRESPONDENCE address on your student record. If you have provided a Correspondence address this will be used instead of the Home address to post out communications to you. (See www.shef.ac.uk/ssid/record/correspondence.html for more information) The Schools will not send out correspondence to your TERM address once you have completed your studies with us.

You can check and update all your address information by logging on to the SSID website at www.shef.ac.uk/ssid/record/pin.html. You will need your UCARD PIN number to access your student record.

I confirm that I have checked, and updated if necessary, my HOME address details on my University student record tick to confirm √ I wish correspondence to go to a temporary/other address and not my Home address, and I have therefore provided CORRESPONDENCE address details on my University student record. tick to confirm �

Alumni Information

I agree that the Information School may pass details regarding the result of my degree to the relevant Professional Body Organizations for the purposes of assisting these organisations in deciding my eligibility for the award of professional accreditation. tick to agree √

I would like my name to go on the School’s Alumni webpage. I would like my name and email address to go on the School’s Alumni webpage My email address is________________________________________________

(please do not use your Sheffield University email address)

tick to agree � tick to agree �

I would like to be forwarded details of any job vacancies received by the School.

My email address is_________________________ (please do not use your Sheffield University email address) tick to agree �

First Employment Destination Details for School Records

It is very important that we receive information on how and where students have gained their first employment after finishing their programme of study with the Information School. Prospective and current students find it very useful to know the types of jobs/sectors that graduates of our programmes can expect to go into and we provide summarised information on the School website at www.shef.ac.uk/is/careers for each separate programme. The School also has to provide a summary report to the University Faculties on first destinations as part of Teaching Quality Assessment, Therefore any updated information you can give us is vital and very much appreciated.

46

Employer’s name and address (inc. telephone number and email if available):

Job Title:

Brief Job Description:

Starting Date: Please tell us where you saw this post advertised:

Is this employment: Full-time or Part-time

Is this employment: Permanent or Temporary

Are you returning to an existing post: YES or NO

Would you be interested in participating in careers talks within the iSchool? My email address is________________________________________________

(please do not use your Sheffield University email address)

tick to agree �

Signed____________Danting Wan_________________ Date ____20/08/2016___________