Research On Driving Factors Of Users Participation In Social Media Hot Event

In recent years,a series of Internet services known as the "social media" rise rapidly.As for the user,social media can provide them a media platform on which the information resources can flow freely among individuals:users can spread their favorite news contents to the entire network space through their personal social network on the social media platform,which will promote the dissemination and spread of news contents.More importantly,during the process of information dissemination,users who pay attentions to the same news contents can discussion and debate the news issues which the news contents focus on.As more and more government departments begin to use social media to provide public services,users also can give feedback,such like their own thoughts and policy suggestion about social and political issues,directly to government departments.The advantage of social media in information exchange makes it possible to play an important role in breaking hot events.Recently,the role which social media plays in the global social movements and political protests and crisis response during sudden-onset disasters crisis response attract increasingly attention from the academic research community.However,we still do not know much about the behavioral mechanisms of individuals in social media hot event.Existing research still has not studied the information sharing,issue discussion and policy suggestion among individuals in social media hot event.The social events in the past show that,besides online participatory behaviors,hot events on social media platforms can also lead to participation in the real world:social media users will share content of hot event,discuss the issue which social media hot event focus on and even offer policy suggestion to government departments in the real world.However,the existing research is still a lack of attention on online-offline interactive participation mechanism in social media hot event.This article is based an typical social media hot event("under the dome" or"Qiongdingzhixia" event),a real-time online survey was conducted during the event,and the first-hand survey data from individual participants in this social media hot event were obtained.This research aims to understand the individual behavior mechanism in this social media hot event.This paper mainly includes two studies.Study 1 focus on analysis of driving factors of users' social media hot event participating decision-making process:after social media hot event happened,for those social media users who have already learned about the event through the various channels.,what factor will drive them to join the event?Study 2 focus on driving factors of users' different types of social media hot event participating behaviors:after social media hot event happened,if the user decides to join the event,what factor will drive them to act different types of participatory behavior?The individual participatory behavior investigated in Study 2 includes online participation behavior(including information sharing on social media,issue discussion on social media and policy suggestion on social media)and offline participation behavior(including information sharing in real world,issue discussion in real world and policy suggestion in real world).In this paper,The author finds that,about the driving factors of individual's social media hot event participating decision-making process in social media hot event,media factors(including social media intensity and perceived influence of online public opinion),issue characteristics(including perceived issue importance,environmental issue discussion on social media in past 2 years,environmental issue discussion in real world in past 2 years and member of environmental organization),information source characteristics(including source credibility and source familiarity),and online social capital(including,bonding social capital on social media and bridging social capital on social media)have different degrees of significant impacts upon individual's social media hot event participating decision-making.Moreover,these factors above also have significant impact upon individual's in online and offline participation behavior in social media hot event,in addition,information content characteristics(including content credibility and narrative structure)a strong predictor of individual's in online and offline participation behavior.At the same time,this article also finds that in social media hot event,individual's online participation behavior has a significant mobilization effect upon offline participation behavior.The core research findings of this paper are summarised as the basic constraints of media factors,the prediction effect of issue characteristics,the mobilization effect of information characteristics,the transmission effect of social network and the interaction of online and offline behavior.In the last part of this article,the author points out the limitations of this article and offers some suggestions for future research.