Visualisations for China’s news media tweeting, competing with US source

Abstract

The data archive includes a series of interactive visualisations developed for the above paper as a research tool for better data analysis. This paper examines China's recent initiative on international social media and assesses its effectiveness in counteracting Western dominance in international communication. Analysing data collected from the Twitter platform of three public accounts run by China's state news media CGTN, People's Daily, and Xinhua News, it finds that their news agenda about China focuses on the country's top leaders and achievements, while that about other countries is on breaking news. Their China-related tweets receive more positive replies than their non-China related tweets, but tweets about China's top leader receive less positive replies than soft news items. Analysis of Twitter data of the #southchinasea finds that China's media mainly compete with US sources for influence. China's state media influence the news agenda of the issue by active and persistent tweeting, and drawing retweets. However, US sources are more influential as a whole in setting the news agenda and amplifying certain news events. The study finds evidence that forces seemingly unfriendly to both China and the US attempt to skew the news agenda of #southchinasea using manipulated accounts.