During a public health crisis, the provision and dissemination of health-related information are important for the relevant authorities to keep the public informed. By using different types of message framing, the authorities can effectively guide and persuade people to adopt health-related behaviors (such as vaccination). In this study, a web-based experiment using a 2 × 2 (message framing: gain framing versus loss framing) × (message presentation: narrative versus non-narrative) design was conducted to investigate the effects of different message frames on vaccination promotion. In total, 298 college students were recruited to participate in this study. The results suggest that, for message framing, loss-framed (vs. gain-framed) messages lead to higher intentions to get vaccinated. Furthermore, compared with non-narrative messages, narrative messages are more persuasive in promoting vaccination behavior. However, the interaction effect between gain–loss message framing and narrative framing is not significant. Additionally, perceived severity, perceived benefits, and perceived costs mediate the effect of narrative framing on behavioral intentions. In other words, compared with non-narrative messages, narrative messages lead to higher levels of perceived severity and perceived benefits, and a lower level of perceived costs, which in turn increase intentions to get vaccinated. This paper provides insightful implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Chinese creators and Douyin (a prominent Chinese short-video platform) are building a strong relationship in cultural production. Based on the social exchange theory, this study tries to explore the process and mechanism of monetization in Chinese platforms. Using the app walkthrough method and in-depth interviews with 19 full-time creators, we contend that Chinese creators and Douyin engage in a repetitive but unequal exchange with the common goal of earning income. Douyin works with creators to cultivate their thirst for revenue over time, while mastering the creative labor, before finally tying them to monetary gains. Douyin not only binds exposure and allocates Internet traffic to new creators, but also develops Dou+, a traffic marketing tool that leverages the affordances of creative work visibility. Douyin first enhances the creators’ income expectations through this step. The platform then directs creators through the Star-Chart content trading system, and establishes the platform-advertiser-creator transaction chain. When the exchange between Douyin and creators becomes stable, the platform sets up an uncertain revenue mechanism. Douyin’s commitment to creating a standardized assembly line of production and financial benefit for creators has established an exchange mode between the platform and creators at the expense of innovation and diversity. We argue that this standardized labor process eliminates the autonomy of cultural production.

This study aims to analyse and clarify why mobile payments have been adopted in China at such a rapid pace. Unlike previous studies which focused on mobile payment functionality and the micro-level reasons for adoption, this study emphasized the macro-level and meso-level reasons with an emphasis on social relationships or guanxi to explain the widespread and rapid adoption in China of mobile payment. Initially mobile payment was widely dispersed by leveraging the trust existing in strong relationship ties (e.g. mobile ‘red packets’). In the second phase of mass adoption there was a shift toward relying on economic exchanges in the context of weak urban ties. Now in the third phase mobile payment seeks to abandon social relations altogether relying on technologies for direct human-to-machine interactions. The three successive phases show how the strong interactions between financial regulatory policy and mobile payment development have affected social relationships.

As algorithm-driven content platforms sweep the world, what is changing in journalism? This article investigates news production of the Chinese official media on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok). From the perspectives of news gathering, professional role, and news value, we conducted a manual content analysis (N = 991) of four representative Chinese official media (People’s Daily, China Youth Daily, Southern Metropolis Daily and Sichuan Observer) to reveal the commonalities and heterogeneities of their news production on Douyin. Then, through an automated content analysis of Sichuan Observer (N = 16,045), we illustrate how district media convergence centers have fought for public attention as emerging actors in the news ecosystem. Overall, we map the current practices of Chinese official media on the emerging algorithm-driven content platforms, focusing on how they pursue a new type of news orientation and popularize the Party’s message while disseminating entertainment content. Contributions, such as the expansion of the classification framework of Chinese official media, and the catering of journalism to platforms, are discussed.

In this article, we analyze the rise of data visualization in social and political contexts. Against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, we consider a case in Shenzhen, China, and demonstrate the impact of visualization as intermediation for data on policies and society. We propose an epistemology of visualization as infrastructure. In China, visualization has been developed as a technological system to support information dissemination and collective action in public crises. Three characteristics are proposed to describe China’s data visualization politics during the pandemic, in particular, to summarize the power relationships between visual brokers, policymakers, and public users in data visualization. Further, based on the conceptualization of the links between visualization, infrastructure, and data politics, visualization serves as an important component of information infrastructure, and is an easily overlooked technical process. The creation and use of data may seem like normalized actions, but data visualization in fact supports the perception, participation, proposal, and critique of data politics issues. Via a focus group discussion with members of the Shenzhen public health sector and in-depth interviews with Shenzhen residents, we developed a qualitative effectiveness measurement framework highlighting the potential for the involvement of visualization in politics and activism.

This article investigates the diffusion and adoption of ChatGPT among college students from a multinational convenience sample, informed by the scholarly literature on the diffusion and progressive appropriation of ChatGPT by students and teachers within the education sector and the strategies adopted by academic institutions. We applied a figurational approach to this study, offering two theses that try to understand the societal meaning of ChatGPT diffusion in the educational sector. Operationally, we explored university students’ behavioral intentions, practices of use, and opinions toward ChatGPT in five countries (China, Italy, Kenya, Uruguay, and the United States of America) through an online survey. Results indicated that: (1) students seem to be cautious or resist the hype of generative intelligence; (2) an essential cultural pattern emerges: American and Italian students are more pessimistic toward ChatGPT, whereas Chinese students, sometimes accompanied by Kenyan and Uruguayans students, are more optimistic; (3) men and techno-scientific students are more positive toward ChatGPT than women and socio-humanistic students.