Xu Jing, Zhang Huijun
Department of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Science, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
Department of Physics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Mar 22;19(7):3776. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19073776.
Social media has generated new opportunities for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to inform and educate publics, and more powerfully, it enables NGOs to mobilize people to act. To enhance understanding how social media functions to serve action-oriented communication for organizations, we focused on WeChat, the largest social media in China. We examined an original dataset of 2472 articles posted by 175 environmental NGOs (ENGOs) during a two-month period in 2019 on WeChat. A qualitative content analysis was conducted to identify what actions ENGOs use WeChat to mobilize. We used statistical methods to analyze the effectiveness of ENGOs' action-oriented utilization of WeChat and the organizational differences in the adoption of action-oriented messages. This study reveals that more than a quarter of the articles were mobilizational in nature. There were three major types of action ENGOs mobilize via WeChat. Though the informational use of WeChat is extensive, users prefer action-oriented messages and the activating strategy is more effective in motivating users to engage. Our analysis indicates that the more participatory people feel, the more likely they are to respond to WeChat messages, and the more they are involved. Our findings have implications for how the adoption of WeChat helps engender new paradigms of citizen participation.
社交媒体为非政府组织（NGO）向公众进行宣传和教育创造了新机遇，更重要的是，它使非政府组织能够动员人们采取行动。为了加深对社交媒体如何为组织服务于行动导向型传播的理解，我们聚焦于中国最大的社交媒体微信。我们研究了175个环境非政府组织（ENGO）在2019年为期两个月的时间里在微信上发布的2472篇文章的原始数据集。我们进行了定性内容分析，以确定环境非政府组织利用微信来动员的行动。我们使用统计方法来分析环境非政府组织对微信的行动导向型利用的有效性以及在采用行动导向型信息方面的组织差异。本研究表明，超过四分之一的文章本质上具有动员性质。环境非政府组织通过微信动员的行动主要有三种类型。虽然微信的信息性使用很广泛，但用户更喜欢行动导向型信息，且激活策略在激励用户参与方面更有效。我们的分析表明，人们感觉参与度越高，就越有可能回复微信消息，参与程度也越高。我们的研究结果对于微信的采用如何促成公民参与的新范式具有启示意义。
