Grounded in face negotiation theory and integrated with uses and gratifications theory and the technology acceptance model, this study explores how social face influences utilitarian and hedonic smartphone use in China. The findings of a survey of 725 smartphone users reveal that face gain positively predicts hedonic smartphone use and exerts a stronger influence on hedonic use than on utilitarian use. While face-loss avoidance did not directly predict utilitarian use, it positively moderates the effect of perceived usefulness on utilitarian smartphone use. These results confirm the dual-mechanism nature of the paradox of belonging and distinction: whereas face gain acts as an explicit engine for social distinction through hedonic play, face-loss avoidance functions as a defensive anchor that reinforces utility to ensure social inclusion in a collectivistic cultural context.

Social media serves as a vital platform for facilitating dynamic public discourse. Drawing on hostile media perception and social identity theory, this study investigates the independent and combined effects of multiple predictors on individuals' willingness to express opinions and their preferred modes of expression on social media, with a focus on Hong Kong's National Flag and National Emblem Ordinance issue. A representative population survey (N = 1,244) revealed that respondents' perception of hostile bias in Ordinance-related news coverage was positively correlated with their increased engagement in opinion sharing and debate on social media. Furthermore, this relationship was moderated by respondents' sense of political efficacy, that is, the belief in personal capacity to influence political outcomes, and their attitude extremity, that is, the degree of opinion polarization. Notably, highly polarized individuals showed a marked preference for opinion sharing over opinion debate, especially when coupled with strong political efficacy. Both theoretical contributions and practical implications emerging from the research findings are discussed to advance our understanding of opinion expression dynamics in digital space.

This study explored the psychological mechanism of how journalists, as a critical interest group responsible for disseminating accurate information to the public, affectively respond to misinformation. Building on the influence of presumed media influence (IPMI) theory, this survey of Chinese journalists (N = 574) reveals that journalists' presumed influence of misinformation on others is positively associated with their perception of journalism's normative role, mental resilience towards misinformation, and work anxiety. Journalists' mental resilience towards misinformation is the dynamic attenuating their anxiety. The study suggests that the perceived social impact of journalists' own work on the public negatively moderates the relationship between the presumed influence of misinformation and the perceived functions of journalism, as well as the relationship between the presumed influence of misinformation and work anxiety. This study thus contends that journalists' confidence in the efficacy of journalism as an institution and in their own professional endeavors can enhance their well-being and their tenets to serve the public.

Informed by the social media political participation model, this study explored cognitive mechanisms by which social media exposure to policy-related news affects willingness to express opinions on the issue. A cross-sectional survey conducted in Hong Kong (N = 1,244) suggested distinct roles of two types of issue involvement in this process. A serial mediation model revealed the indirect influence of social media news exposure on opinion expression through outcome-relevant involvement, perceived behavioral constraint, and cognitive reactance in sequence, particularly among pro-democracy and centrist partisans. Value-relevant involvement, rather than outcome-relevant involvement, was found to mediate the association between social media news exposure and opinion expression. However, no variations in this relationship were observed across party orientations.

This study investigates users' intention to discontinue using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) after adoption. Drawing on privacy calculus theory, we analyzed how the perceived privacy risk-benefit ratio influences this intention. A survey of 832 GenAI users revealed that a higher perceived risk-benefit ratio indirectly leads to information avoidance via psychological reactance. This chain of effects further contributes to the intention to discontinue use through the sequential mediation of psychological reactance and information avoidance. Our findings offer a novel perspective and empirical evidence within the privacy calculus framework for understanding GenAI discontinuance, highlighting the critical roles of psychological reactance and information avoidance in forming effective privacy strategies for AI.

Public health participation plays a significant role in reducing risks and protecting community members during public health emergencies, especially in China due to its pronounced population density and the imperative for concerted public coordination to achieve the goal of public health protection. Guided by social capital theory and conservation of resources theory, this study develops an analytical model to explore the effect of social media involvement on public health participation mediated by social support, social trust and social responsibility. A cross-sectional survey was executed and a total of 976 completed questionnaires were collected. Results reveal that (a) social media involvement positively predicts social trust, social support and social responsibility; (b) social trust and social support have positive influence on social responsibility and public health participation; (c) further analysis of the data confirms a two-step mediation model: social support and social trust mediate the effect of social media involvement on social responsibility; social responsibility further mediates the relationship between social media involvement, social trust and social support and the outcome variable public health participation. Findings suggest that only in a society with adequate social resources will people take an active part in social actions for common interests. The study extends our understanding of the vital role of social media in maintaining and growing social resources for community health goals.

Based on Protection Motivation Theory, this study investigates the factors that influence altruistic behavior during COVID-19 lockdowns. A survey of 582 respondents who had experienced the pandemic lockdown or quarantine in China revealed that exposure to information from both formal and alternative sources reduces risk uncertainty. Exposure to information from formal sources increases public trust while exposure to alternative sources shows no significant association with public trust. Risk uncertainty has a direct negative effect on altruistic behavior and an indirect negative effect mediated by self-efficacy. Public trust exerts a positive effect on altruistic behavior mediated by self-efficacy. The findings demonstrate that building public trust and reducing risk uncertainty through effective communication from formal sources can bolster self-efficacy which further encourages altruistic behavior among people affected by strict control measures during a public health emergency.

This study employed the model of stigma communication (MSC) to analyze how exposure to COVID-19-related information affected stigma-related information sharing about people who contracted COVID-19 during the pandemic and examined the cognitive process of the MSC in a collectivist culture. Based on a survey of 526 social media users during the COVID-19 pandemic in China, the study found that exposure to contact tracing information and pandemic control information had different impact on stigma-related information sharing through a series of cognitive variables. A dual-path model showed that perceived personal risk influenced stigma-related information sharing through attribution of blame toward the infected (the personal path), while perceived social risk influenced stigma-related information sharing through protection norm conformity (the social path). Compared to the personal path, the social path is more salient in shaping stigmatized attitudes and behaviors. The findings and discussions added to our understanding of the intricate stigma communication process in a collectivist culture.

This study examines the effects of media exposure on perceived severity of the pandemic and people's intention to get the COVID-19 vaccine, here as mediated by immersion. Informed by transportation theory and construal level theory, the study incorporates immersion evoked by media messages to analyze the psychological mechanism connecting media exposure and people's evaluation of and behavioral intentions toward the public health crisis. Using data collected from a random sample of 1190 college students in China, media exposure was found not to be directly associated with perceived severity of the pandemic and people's intention to get the COVID-19 vaccine; instead, the relationships were mediated by media immersion. Perceived severity of the pandemic also mediated the relationship between media exposure and protective behavioral intention.

The study proposed a theoretical framework to identify the underlying mechanisms by which social media use affected individual and collective behaviors (i.e., self-protective and collective engagement behavior) during a public health emergency. The framework first considered how people shaped personal-level and societal-level risk perceptions from social media use and then examined how risk perception, in turn, predicted perceived media influence on themselves and on others, and subsequently individual and collective behaviors. The framework was tested with the survey data of 976 social media users during the 2022 COVID-19 outbreaks in China. The results showed that the indirect association between social media use and self-protective behaviors was mediated by risk perception, at both the personal and societal levels. The indirect association between social media use and collective engagement behaviors was mediated by societal-level risk perception and perceived media influence on others in sequence. However, no direct effect of social media use on collective engagement behaviors was found.

Objective When hyper-infectious diseases sweep over the world, pro-community participation has been found to effectively curb the spread of viruses. This study explores the associations among media-related perceptions and media users’ pro-community participation during the peak of the 2022 COVID-19 outbreaks in China. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 976 Chinese media users in April 2022 to collect data on their pro-community participation and perceptions of pandemic news influence, information relevance, and credibility of traditional media and social media. Hierarchical regression analyses were run to analyze the associations between these perceptual variables and pro-community participation. Results The findings revealed that information relevance was positively associated with perceived news influence on oneself and pro-community participation. Perceived credibility of traditional media was positively associated with perceived news influence on both oneself and others. Perceived credibility of social media was positively associated with perceived news influence on others. Additionally, perceived credibility of traditional media positively moderated the association between information relevance and perceived news influence on others. Conclusions Information relevance and perceived media credibility play significant roles in shaping media user’ perceptions of news influence and their subsequent pro-community behaviors. Higher perceived media credibility can produce a broader impact on perceived news influence on both media users themselves and others, highlighting its importance in public health communication strategies. These insights can inform media practices and public health policies to enhance community participation during public health crises.

ABSTRACT Informed by the theoretical framework of media effects and resonance theory, this study investigates how issue obtrusiveness and information richness as message attributes, and media hierarchy and orientation as source characteristics influence audience engagement with news posts on social media. The data of news posts (N = 943,793) from the top 99 Sina Weibo accounts of Chinese media with likes, comments, and reposts as indicators of audience engagement were retrieved. Through multilevel modeling, the study finds that source characteristics exert stronger effects on audience engagement than message attributes, and the effects on comments differ from those on likes and reposts. The association between issue obtrusiveness and comments is stronger than that between obtrusiveness and likes/reposts. Posts of high information richness draw more audience engagement than posts of low information richness. Through their news posts, central-level media attract more engagement than local media. The implications of the findings are discussed.

This study empirically tested the proposition that diversified media exposure mediates the effect of involvement on hostile media perceptions (HMPs). Informed by social identity theory and the intergroup contact theory, the study examined issue involvement and cognitive involvement as the antecedents of diversified media exposure concerning U.S.-China trade dispute and tested how diversified media exposure affected peoples' perceptual bias of U.S. media as out-group media. Using the data collected from a sample of 1029 Chinese media users, the structural equation modeling indicated that issue involvement and cognitive involvement both escalated people's diversified media exposure. Out-group media exposure significantly reduced HMP, whereas expanded information seeking boosted HMP. The serial mediation model also reveals that extended discussion and expanded information seeking mediated the relationship between involvement and HMP.

This study tested a model of predictors of opinion extremity about the U.S.–China trade dispute through a survey of 1,029 media users in China. The findings indicate that traditional and new media exposures do not differ significantly in their positive effects on opinion extremity. Systematic processing negatively moderates the relationship between new media exposure and opinion extremity, whereas systematic and heuristic processing modes show variant positive moderation effects on the relationship between traditional media exposure and opinion extremity. Issue sophistication is not found to be a moderator of the effect of media exposure on opinion extremity. Theoretical implications are discussed.

This paper constructs the model of network economics to study the effect of different levels of network convergence on the digital culture industry. Then uses regression models and mediating effect models to test the effect mechanism of network convergence on the digital culture industry of China. This paper used panel data to conduct an empirical study. The data in this paper were quarterly. The time range was from the first quarter of 2009 to the third quarter of 2013 for 19 quarters.The three data types in econometrics are time series data, cross-sectional data, and panel data.The main conclusions are as follows. Network convergence brings positive policy effects and adverse capital effects. The impact of network convergence on firm performance of the digital culture industry is not statistically significant, and this effect also has no indirect effects on the test of mediating effect. However, network convergence indirectly leads to the reduction of operating costs of the digital culture industry. The indirect effect is brought by the chain mediating effect of policy effect and capital effect. The study could provide a reference for other countries and regions. Meanwhile, it can be used to analyze the impact of different media convergence on digital industries.

Through a survey of Chinese journalists, this study tests a moderated mediation model of journalists' organizational commitment ensuing journalism industry recession. Sustained by social exchange theory and expectancy theory, this study found that perceived social impact is positively related to perceived task significance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The positive relationship between perceived social impact and organizational commitment is mediated by perceived task significance and job satisfaction. More importantly, taking journalism as a social-value-loaded profession, the study reveals that altruism negatively moderated the relationship between perceived social impact and organizational commitment, whereas positively moderated the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

This study examines the online expression of Chinese social networking site (SNS) users in a human brand crisis. Using the case of Sun Yang’s doping allegations controversy, the research employed content analysis to examine how Chinese users rendered social support and acted as surrogate crisis responders for Sun in a collectivist Chinese culture. The results indicate that (1) Sun’s supporters were most likely to display emotional support, and this pattern continued over time, (2) Chinese SNS users were inclined to implement the reputational defense strategies of attacking the accuser, denial, and reminding in response to their hero’s case, and (3) the prevalence of the three defense strategies varied over time. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided regarding how parasocial relationship with the accused human brand and in-group/out-group differentiation affect SNS users’ online expressions of social support and reputational defense in the Chinese culture.

This study examines the influences of media exposure, social realism, and proxy efficacy on the perceived effects of news about the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data collected from a sample of 1,190 college students in China, this study found that exposure to news about the pandemic is positively related to social realism and proxy efficacy. Furthermore, social realism and proxy efficacy were significantly correlated with third-person perception (TPP). Most importantly, the results of the study show that social realism and proxy efficacy also mediated the relationship between exposure to COVID-19 news and TPP.

ABSTRACT Informed by social cognitive theory and impersonal impact hypothesis, this study examined the effects of media exposure, perceived efficacy and prior positive experience on risk perception during a risk event concerning mishandled vaccine in China. Through an online survey of 923 Internet users in China, the study explored the effect of media exposure on perceived risk in two dimensions: exposure frequency and exposure extensity, and found that exposure extensity was a significant predictor of personal risk perception, while exposure frequency had a significant effect on social risk perception. Response efficacy negatively predicted perceived social risk, while self-efficacy did not predict perceived personal risk. Prior positive experience moderated the effects of exposure extensity and self-efficacy on perceived personal risk. Prior positive experience also moderated the effects of response efficacy on perceived social risk, but did not moderate the effect of exposure frequency on perceived social risk.

Different from the conventional content-survey result comparison approach in agenda-setting research, which compares media agenda and public agenda at the aggregated level, this study investigates the perceived agenda-setting effect of media at the individual level in an international context. A survey of American respondents (N = 848) identifies perceived agenda-setting effect from individuals’ cognitive process, and finds that the U.S. audience are aware that their perception of China is shaped by media coverage of China-related topics. The study finds that media use, political interest in China, and media trust positively predict perceived agenda-setting effect, while direct experience with China produces no effect. The study also confirms the effect of media use on perceived agenda-setting effect mediated by political interest.