Communication Strategies On Government Weibo From The Perspective Of Communication Accommodation: A Case Study Of Shanghai Metro Rear-End Collision

Weibo, an emerging microblogging website in China, enjoys a higher popularity than other forms of Social Network Services (SNS) for high interactivity, visibility and real-time information release. These characteristics bring a more efficiently interactive platform, government Weibo, enabling civic engagement and political participation, and at the same time arousing unprecedented communication problems for government and the public. However, little research has done on the communication mechanism on Weibo between government and the public.This study investigates communication strategies employed in emergency management on government Weibo under the guidance of Communication Accommodation Theory, according to which that the interactants employ convergence, divergence or maintenance strategies depending upon socio-psychological context, communication characters and additional variables to achieve their communication goals. Data collected on the government account "上海地铁shmetro" about an emergency are examined to answer research questions concerning communication processes empirically on three aspects, temporal accommodation in terms of message length, discourse management in terms of topic selection and speech act accommodation. SPSS is utilized to examine the correlations between the message length of the public and government, Antconc 3.2.4w is used to perform topic identification and manual coding is employed in identification of speech act.The findings suggest that both government and the public employ different communication strategies to achieve their goals respectively driven by respective motivations. In topic dimension, government and the public employed divergence strategies for different needs and it is found that there is no significant correlation in terms of message length. Besides, a holistic divergence process at speech act level implies that both of them employ different linguistic moves to achieve respective goals. In addition, the results validate the interactive influence government and the public had on each other by employing communication strategies, especially in terms of topic selection. Thus, government Weibo accounts shall realize the significance of communication strategies in order to build a sound and sustainable relationship with the public, in which way the e-government may display its maximum effect, especially in the wake of emergency.