A Typology of China's Political Communication Strategies during the COVID-19

• In Event: Poster Session: New Research in Information Technology and Politics & Canadian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: New Research in Information Technology & Politics

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed human society into new risks, and it has also brought new challenges to the country's political communication. Political communication, as a process of serving information, technology and media to power, permeates every aspect of national governance, from information extraction to political propaganda. The important position of political communication is particularly prominent during the epidemic period. The notification of epidemic information and the popularization of epidemic prevention knowledge all directly affect the effect of epidemic prevention and control. Taking China as an example, this paper sorts out the typical cases of political communication that occurred in China during the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and crawls the full amount of microblogs from official accounts such as People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency from the end of 2019 to 2022. Based on big data and cases above all, using typology research methods, this paper endeavors to summarize China's political communication strategies comprehensively.

In China, mainstream media such as "People's Daily" and "Xinhua News Agency" are the official mouthpieces, and during the epidemic, they are mainly responsible for disseminating data, policy announcements, and knowledge popularization. In order to stabilize social order, improve the government's credibility, and maintain the legitimacy of the regime, mainstream media also carry out political propaganda through selective reporting, positive energy promotion, and hot topic resetting. ①Selective reporting strategy includes intercepted reports of overseas media news, selective citations of World Health Organization reports, and selective citations of experts with different viewpoints. As the stage of epidemic changes, the discourse and framework of mainstream media are also constantly being adjusted. At the stage of “dynamic zero COVID policy”, the mainstream media often reported the pathogenicity and infectivity of the virus in large pages, emphasizing the harm and possible sequelae of the virus, in order to endorse the strict prevention and control policies; while after adjusting the prevention policy, the mainstream media began to focus on explaining Omicron's low severe disease rate and low fatality rate to demonstrate the necessity and rationality of policy adjustments. ②Positive energy promotion strategy is reflected in the mainstream media's endless reports of touching stories during the epidemic, creating a positive and good atmosphere in the social media field. ③Hot topic resetting refers to the agenda-setting function of the mainstream media, which replaces public hot-search topics with topics that the mainstream media wants to attract the public's attention, so as to distract and confuse people's attention.

Different communication strategies have brought complex political consequences. While political propaganda had an inspiring and morale-boosting effect during the early stage of COVID-19 pandemic, over time these tactics had some negative consequences as well. First, due to the over-emphasis on the harm of the virus in the "dynamic zero" stage and the serious criticism of the policies of other countries (especially the United States), it is very difficult to change the
prevention policy in the later stage of the epidemic. Mainstream media are bound by the original propaganda narrative framework, and they encounter difficulties to convince the public in a short time. Second, there is a sharp contrast between the narration about epidemic prevention situation in the official discourse and folk discourse. The tension and polarization between the discourses have intensified, and the credibility of the government has been damaged. Third, there is a dislocation between the mainstream media agenda and the agenda that the public indeed cares about. Misinformation related to the epidemic is widely spread and shows a tendency to be politicized.

Author

• Bingyan Wang, Tsinghua University