“To follow and to be followed” has become the new normal in news communication in the age of social media. News audience follow news via social media while they are being followed by news anytime anywhere. This new normal has created a pressing need to investigate whether social media have brought any changes to both party-controlled and market-oriented news media in China in reporting crises. Comparing Xinhua News Agency (party-controlled) and The Paper (market-oriented), this study investigated how they reported COVID-19 and how their news consumers engaged with their COVID-19 news stories on Jinri Toutiao, a popular and yet special form of social media. This study found that Xinhua News Agency continued to stay overwhelmingly positive, while The Paper was more neutral in reporting the health crisis. Xinhua News Agency was surprisingly more episodic than The Paper in framing the pandemic. The Paper, however, had a higher level of user engagement than Xinhua News Agency. To cater to the changing news-seeking behaviors and patterns, both party-controlled and market-oriented news media have changed their operations, but not their fundamental orientations.
AarøeL. (2011). Investigating frame strength: The case of episodic and thematic frames. Political Communication, 28(2), 207–226.
2.
AarøeL.PetersenM. B. (2018). Cognitive biases and communication strength in social networks: The case of episodic frames. British Journal of Political Science, 2020(50), 1561–1581.
3.
AdayS.LivingstonS.HebertM. (2005). Embedding the truth: A cross-cultural analysis of objectivity and television coverage of the Iraq war. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 10(1), 3–21.
4.
Akhavan-MajidR. (2004). Mass media reform in China: Toward a new analytical framework. Gazette, 66(6), 553–565.
5.
AtkinsonM.KyddC. (1997). Individual characteristics associated with World Wide Web user: An empirical study of playfulness and motivation. The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems, 28(2), 53–62.
6.
BarberáP.VaccariC.ValerianiA. (2017). Social media, personalisation of news reporting, and media systems’ polarisation in Europe. In BarisioneM.MichailidouA. (Eds.), Social media and European politics (pp. 25–52). Palgrave Macmillan.
7.
BeaudoinC. E. (2007). SARS news coverage and its determinants in China and the US. International Communication Gazette, 69(6), 509–524.
8.
Belair-GagnonV. (2015). Social media at BBC news: The re-making of crisis reporting. Routledge.
9.
BoukesM. (2021). Episodic and thematic framing effects on the attribution of responsibility: The effects of personalized and contextualized news on perceptions of individual and political responsibility for causing the economic crisis. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 26(1), 1–22.
10.
BrightJ. (2016). The social news gap: How news reading and news sharing diverge. Journal of Communication, 66(3), 343–365.
11.
BrownE.CairnsP. (2004). A grounded investigation of game immersion. In Proceedings of the conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1297–1300). ACM.
12.
ChanJ. M. (2003). Administrative boundaries and media marketization: A comparative analysis of the newspaper, TV and Internet markets in China. In LeeC.-C. (Ed.), Chinese media, global contexts (pp. 159–176). Routledge.
CraftS.WantaW. (2004). Women in the newsroom: Influences of female editors and reporters on the news agenda. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 81(1), 124–138.
15.
CsikszentmihalyiM. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
16.
DanV.RauppJ. (2018). A systematic review of frames in news reporting of health risks: Characteristics, construct consistency vs. name diversity, and the relationship of frames to framing functions. Health, Risk & Society, 20(5–6), 203–226.
17.
DunawayJ. (2013). Media ownership and story tone in campaign news. American Politics Research, 41(1), 24–53.
18.
EntmanR. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58.
19.
FeezellaJ. T.GlazierbR. A.BoydstunA. E. (2021). Framing, identity, and responsibility: Do episodic vs. thematic framing effects vary by target population?Politics, Groups, and Identities, 9(2), 347–368.
20.
FuK. W.ZhouL.ZhangQ.ChanY. Y.BurkhartF. (2012). Newspaper coverage of emergency response and government responsibility in domestic natural disasters: China-US and within-China comparisons. Health, Risk & Society, 14(1), 71–85.
21.
GrossK. (2008). Framing persuasive appeals: Episodic and thematic framing, emotional response, and policy opinion. Political Psychology, 29(2), 169–192.
22.
HoltonA.LeeN.ColemanR. (2014). Commenting on health: A framing analysis of user comments in response to health articles online. Journal of Health Communication, 19(7), 825–837.
23.
HongT. (2007). Information control in time of crisis: The framing of SARS in China-based newspapers and Internet sources. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(5), 696–699.
24.
IyengarS. (1990). Framing responsibility for political issues: The case of poverty. Political Behaviour, 12(1), 19–40.
25.
IyengarS. (1991). Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. University of Chicago Press.
26.
JianG.LiuT. (2018). Journalist social media practice in China: A review and synthesis. Journalism, 19(9–10), 1452–1470.
27.
KangS. (2013). Coverage of autism spectrum disorder in the US television news: An analysis of framing. Disability & Society, 28(2), 245–259.
28.
KimK. H.YoonY. (2009). The influence of journalists’ gender on newspaper stories about women Cabinet members in South Korea. Asian Journal of Communication, 19(3), 289–301.
29.
LeeC. C.HeZ.HuangY. (2007). Party-market corporatism, clientelism, and media in Shanghai. The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 12(3), 21–42.
30.
LeeS. T.BasnyatI. (2013). From press release to news: Mapping the framing of the 2009 H1N1 A influenza pandemic. Health Communication, 28(2), 119–132.
31.
LiB.StokowskiS.DittmoreS. W.ScottO. K. (2017). For better or for worse: The impact of social media on Chinese sports journalists. Communication & Sport, 5(3), 311–330.
32.
LiJ.BrewerP. R.LeyB. L. (2017). Chinese news coverage of diseases with domestic versus foreign origins: An analysis of Xinhua framing of SARS and Ebola. China Media Research, 13(2), 75–85.
33.
LiuN. X. (2018). News Framing through English-Chinese translation: A comparative study of Chinese and English media discourse. Routledge.
34.
LutherC. A.ZhouX. (2005). Within the boundaries of politics: News framing of SARS in China and the United States. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 82(4), 857–872.
35.
MatthesJ. (2009). Framing responsibility for political issues: The preference for dispositional attributions and the effects of news frames. Communication Research Reports, 26(1), 82–86.
36.
MengB.RantanenT. (2015). A change of lens: A call to compare the media in China and Russia. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 32(1), 1–15.
37.
NewhagenJ. E. (1994). The relationship between censorship and the emotional and critical tone of television news coverage of the Persian Gulf War. Journalism Quarterly, 71(1), 32–42.
38.
O’BrienH. L.TomsE. G. (2014). What is user engagement? a conceptual framework for defining user engagement with technology. Journal of the Association for Information & Technology, 59(6), 938–955.
39.
OhD. C.ZhouW. (2012). Framing SARS: A case study in Toronto of a mainstream newspaper and a Chinese ethnic newspaper. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 20(5), 261–273.
40.
PanZ. (2000). Improvising reform activities: The changing reality of journalistic practice in China. In LeeC. C. (Ed.), Power, money, and media: Communication patterns and bureaucratic control in cultural China (pp. 68–111). Northwestern University Press.
41.
ParsonsP.XuX. (2001). News framing of the Chinese embassy bombing by the People’s Daily and the New York Times. Asian Journal of Communication, 11(1), 51–67.
42.
RenJ.PetersH. P.AllgaierJ.LoY. Y. (2014). Similar challenges but different responses: Media coverage of measles vaccination in the UK and China. Public Understanding of Science, 23(4), 366–375.
43.
RodgersS.ThorsonE. (2003). A socialization perspective on male and female reporting. Journal of Communication, 53(4), 658–675.
44.
ScheufeleD. A.TewksburyD. (2007). Framing, agenda setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57, 9–20.
45.
StephensonW. (1967). Play theory. In StephensonW. (Ed.), The play theory of mass communication (pp. 45–65). University of Chicago Press.
46.
SterrettD.MalatoD.BenzJ.KantorL.TompsonT.RosenstielT.SondermanJ.LokerK. (2019). Who shared it?: Deciding what news to trust on social media. Digital Journalism, 7(6), 783–801.
47.
TomsE. G. (1998). What motivates browsing? In WilsonT. D.AllenD. K. (Eds.), Exploring the contexts of information behaviour (pp. 191–208). Taylor Graham.
48.
TomsE. G. (2000). Understanding and facilitating the browsing of electronic text. International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 52(3), 423–452.
49.
TomsE. G. (2002). Information interaction: Providing a framework for information architecture. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53(10), 855–862.
50.
TriandisH. C. (1995). Individualism and collectivism: New directions in social psychology. Westview Press.
51.
WangX. (2007). For the good of public health or for political propaganda: People’s Daily’s coverage of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic. China Media Research, 3, 25–32.
52.
YangA. (2012). Understanding the changing Chinese Media: Through the lens of crises. China Media Research, 8(2), 63–75.
53.
YuS. (2003). Lessons from SARS coverage. Nieman Reports, 57(4), 91–93.
54.
ZhangY. (2007). Media landscape in China in the age of globalization (2000-2005). China Media Research, 3, 76–86.
55.
ZhangY.JinY. (2017). Thematic and episodic framing of depression: How Chinese and American newspapers framed a major public health threat. Athens Journal of Mass Media and Communications, 3(2), 91–106.
56.
ZhangY.JinY.TangY. (2014). Framing depression cultural and organizational influences on coverage of a public health threat and attribution of responsibilities in Chinese news media, 2000–2012. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 92(1), 99–120.
57.
ZhaoY. (1998). Media, market, and democracy in China: Between the party line and the bottom line. University of Illinois Press.
58.
ZhaoY. (2000). From commercialization to conglomeration: The transformation of the Chinese Press within the Orbit of the Party State. Journal of Communication, 50(2), 3–25.
59.
ZhaoY.MoyP. (2007). Parsing framing processes: The interplay between online public opinion and media coverage. Journal of Communication, 57, 79–98.
