Publications

Borderline content and platformised speech governance: Mapping TikTok’s moderation controversies in South and Southeast Asia

Published in Policy & Internet, 2024

Content moderation comes with trade-offs and moral dilemmas, particularly for transnational platforms governing borderline content where the boundaries of acceptability are subject to debate. While extensive research has explored the legality and legitimacy of platformised speech governance in established democracies, few address the complexities of less-than-democratic developing nations. Through sociolegal analysis and controversy mapping of TikTok’s localised moderation in South and Southeast Asia, the study examines how major actors negotiate the shifting boundaries of online speech. The analysis reveals that neither the platform nor regional states are well-positioned to achieve sound governance of borderline content. Primarily, TikTok localises its moderation based on pragmatic necessity rather than moral obligations, deliberately sidestepping contentious political controversies. Governments demonstrate determined efforts to control online discourse, leveraging legal uncertainty to further political agendas. Thus, local content governance often relies on vague rationales around securitisation and morality. The contradictory motives of (de)politicising borderline moderation seemingly counterbalance each other, yet in practice lead to an accountability vacuum where legitimate interests are sidelined. Given the lack of normative common ground, ensuring procedural justice and encouraging civic participation are essential to counteract rhetoric that rationalises imposition of certain speech norms hinging on imbalanced political power.

Attracting Effective Support on Social Networking Sites: Examining Three Characteristics of Online Support-Seeking Messages

Published in International Journal of Communication, 2023

Effective support acquisition on social networking sites (SNSs) usually begins with strategic support seeking. This study conducted an online cross-sectional survey (N = 405) to examine whether certain characteristics of an online support-seeking post would draw more support. The results showed that negative posts could draw more emotional support compared with neutral and positive posts. SNS users who posted negative content, directly solicited support, and adopted more politeness strategies in support seeking would receive more informational support. Self-presentational concerns, however, were not associated with the examined characteristics of online support-seeking posts. The findings suggest that online support seekers can strategically compose their messages to elicit more effective support.

From Monologue to Dialogue: Reimagining Intercultural Communication Studies in the Context of the Belt and Road Initiative

Published in Chinese Journal of Journalism and Communication, 2022

The Belt and Road Initiative provides a new context for intercultural communication research at home and abroad. Through reviewing and comparing existing literature in this area, it is found that scholars from both sides tend to be inward-looking and fail to resonate with each other. The “monological” thinking is reflected in dimensions such as the research focus, the span of time and space, the disciplinary background of researchers and the major fields of publications. Different scholarly interests are also rooted in ideological differences such as researchers’ epistemological views on cultural globalization and civilization. Moreover, it reveals the lack of subjectivity among Chinese researchers focusing on intercultural communication studies. This paper proposes that future research should transform from the fragmented and application-oriented mode of knowledge generation centering on the “self”, to a more enriching way of research that incorporates historical contexts, as well as broader and inclusive cultural values across the globe. Building on this, this paper also sheds light on the significance of cultural exchange and mutual understanding in the communication among researchers, and call for a reflexive interdisciplinary academic community that considers positionality, identity and power dynamics in producing knowledge.

How to Obtain Social Support in Online Support Forums? The Effects of Structural Social Capital and Politeness Principle

Published in Chinese Journal of Journalism and Communication, 2021

Online support forum creates a public sphere for exchanging information and meaning. In these embedded virtual communities, users share collective identities and are driven by the same goals. They accumulate social capital through dynamic interactions with each other, and, in turn, construct their own discourses for seeking social support. Based on web-scraped data from an online depression forum, this study generated the network of users’ replies, aiming to investigate their communication and interactions in this social field through the lens of both structural and constructed social capital. On the one hand, users’ discussions either focus on information about depression, or expressions of emotions and feelings, the topics of which were found to be associated with their social capital: Compared with users in the information-based discussion, users in emotion-based discussion possessed more bonding and bridging social capital; the reply distribution in the information-based discussion was more skewed than that in the emotion-based discussion. On the other hand, the language people used when seeking support represented their psychological and cognitive process, and was found to be associated with the volume and quality of received social support: The use of informal language in the posts was positively associated with the number of users’ received replies; the use of first-person plural pronouns and words reflecting cognitive processing positively predicted the average length of received replies, while the use of informal words and the posts’ emotional positivity were negatively associated with the average length of received replies. This study not only offers practical guidance for users seeking support in online support groups or forums, but also promotes the development of China’s “Internet plus Health Care” campaign.

An Examination of Factors Contributing to the Acceptance of Online Health Misinformation

Published in Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

This study examined factors including health-related anxiety, preexisting misinformation beliefs, and repeated exposure contributing to individuals’ acceptance of health misinformation. Through a large-scale online survey, this study found that health-related anxiety was positively associated with health misinformation acceptance. Preexisting misinformation beliefs, as well as repeated exposure to health misinformation, were both positively associated with health misinformation acceptance. The results also showed that demographic variables were significantly associated with health misinformation acceptance. In general, females accepted more health misinformation compared to males. Participants’ age was negatively associated with health misinformation acceptance. Participants’ education level and income were both negatively associated with their acceptance of health misinformation.

Social Bots’ Sentiment Engagement in Health Emergencies: A Topic-Based Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic Discussions on Twitter

Published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when individuals were confronted with social distancing, social media served as a significant platform for expressing feelings and seeking emotional support. However, a group of automated actors known as social bots have been found to coexist with human users in discussions regarding the coronavirus crisis, which may pose threats to public health. To figure out how these actors distorted public opinion and sentiment expressions in the outbreak, this study selected three critical timepoints in the development of the pandemic and conducted a topic-based sentiment analysis for bot-generated and human-generated tweets. The findings show that suspected social bots contributed to as much as 9.27% of COVID-19 discussions on Twitter. Social bots and humans shared a similar trend on sentiment polarity—positive or negative—for almost all topics. For the most negative topics, social bots were even more negative than humans. Their sentiment expressions were weaker than those of humans for most topics, except for COVID-19 in the US and the healthcare system. In most cases, social bots were more likely to actively amplify humans’ emotions, rather than to trigger humans’ amplification. In discussions of COVID-19 in the US, social bots managed to trigger bot-to-human anger transmission. Although these automated accounts expressed more sadness towards health risks, they failed to pass sadness to humans.

Diyi Liu