Online Social Network Discourse Of Higher Education Institutions In China

This research attempts to conduct a genre analysis on the official Weibo posts of Peking University(PKU)as an instance of studying the online social network discourse of higher education institutions in contemporary Chinese society.We hope to figure out: first,whether these posts count as a special genre;second,the features these posts carry from the perspective of genre analysis;third,the influences these posts have on Peking University’s image in cyber space.The research object is the corpus we collected from Peking University’s official Weibo homepage throughout November,2019.We adopt Fairclough’s genre theory as a macro research framework,and Askehave & Nielsen’s digital genre analysis model as a micro research framework.The activity,social relation and communication technology of the posts on the whole are investigated in light of the macro-scope framework;samples in every category are analysed in details from the reading mode and the navigating mode according to the micro-scope framework.Analysis from the macro perspective manifests that PKU Weibo posts on the whole should be regarded a pre-genre,and the posts with the same tag should be deemed as a disembedded genre.For the operators of the official account,releasing Weibo posts is an activity of constructing the university’s public image.The social relation between PKU official Weibo account and its readers is an unequal one between the authority and the public in a disguised form.PKU’s Weibo homepage displays both features of twoway mediated and one-way mediated communication.Analysis from the micro perspective shows a complex picture: the purposes,linking patterns and rhetorical strategies in the navigating mode all display a tendency of embracing the promotional features of the online social networks – to attract readers as many as possible via multiple channels.In the reading mode,the move structures serve several purposes – some are to enhance interaction between the account holder and the readers,some are to manifest the priority of the university and still others are to distribute useful information.We find that two different rhetorical strategies are applied to build a complexed image consisting of an amiable side and a distant side.In conclusion,we find the posts of PKU Weibo display a mixture of characteristics by acting like a conservative top university keeping distance from the public on one hand and by openly welcoming new trends in the online society on the other.This situation results from the inherent promotional characters of the online social networking platform and the operators’ efforts to remain a good image of being a prestigious university and a youngsters-attractive one at the same time.The suggestion we offer to operators and maintainers of other high education institutions’ official Weibo accounts is to give priority to the preservation of the institution’s existing image by posting more academic achievements and famous figures accompanied by positive information contained in pictures of natural scenes,warm notifications,etc.