Attitudinal Research On Government Weibo Comments From Appraisal Perspective:a Case Study Of Haze

Microblog (Weibo), as a newly rising social media, has become a popular internet-based communication platform since it was launched. By virtue of microblog, netizens can instantly post short messages to describe, update and share their current status, as well as present their attitudes toward certain events. Therefore, Weibo has gradually become a vital medium reflecting public opinions. Based on the analytical framework of ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION systems within appraisal theory, the present study, with topic "haze in Beijing" as a context, attempts to investigate the attitudinal resources of comments on the posts of Huanbao Beijing in Sina Weibo. Furthermore, the research also discusses the modulatory role of engagement and graduation subsystem in attitude expression.The statistical results indicate that:(1) in the ATTITUDE system, firstly, due to the vivid and visualized characteristics of internet language on the one hand, Weibo users mainly employ AFFECT and JUDGEMENT to explicitly express their negative attitudes toward hazy weather or related government agencies; on the other hand, influenced by the cultural background or in order to seek for fun online, a small percent of Weibo users incline to use irony, metaphor or hinting to implicitly convey their negative attitudes, thus avoiding the potential conflict and simultaneously achieving the purpose of entertainment. Secondly, as quite a number of followers are social celebrities, officials and organizations in the government Weibo, the percentage of attitude expressions in relatively objective (neutral) stance is second only to that of negative orientation. It shows that those celebrities, officials and organizations, to some degree functioned similarly as "opinion leaders", expect to play a positive role in the guidance of Weibo users’emotions. Finally, through the contrastive analysis, the attitudinal trend reveals the decline of negative attitude and the rise of positive attitude from the beginning to the end of the haze. Specifically, the changes of AFFECT resources mainly indicate that Weibo users are happy about the ending of the haze, and the variations of JUDGEMENT resources demonstrate that Weibo users gradually hold positive attitude toward the government efforts. (2) In the ENGAGEMENT system, when expressing attitudes, Weibo users prefer to use more dialogic EXPANSION than dialogic CONTRACTION to modulate the interpersonal space so as to achieve the interpersonal meaning. (3) In the GRADUATION system, when expressing attitudes, Weibo users also employ graduation resources to adjust their tone in order to strengthen or weaken their attitudinal meaning.By and large, on the event-based government Weibo, users, with the help of the interaction among ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION, can convey their attitude toward appraisal objects. The analysis of attitudinal resources of comments on Weibo may help improve the communication between government and the public effectively, which in return contributes to the development of government Weibo.