Research on the mechanism of national image construction on social media platforms under the perspective of NAS theory

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the rise of anti-globalization rhetoric and the rise of the “Global South”, China, as an integral part of the “All-Bull South” has seen its international communication power increase dramatically. However, on social media platforms, other countries can still influence people’s perception of China’s national image. This paper takes Network Agenda Setting Theory(NAS) as a perspective, adopts the observation method and content analysis method to analyse the topic-led traffic pushing mechanism of Weibo, as well as to analyse the content of Twitter posts on the topic of “China’s carbon emissions”. Through the study, this paper argues that country stereotypes, emotional tendencies of posts, and major social structural issues are all factors that influence the co-occurrence of online issues, and thus affect the construction of national image. Moreover, this paper also provides further thoughts and outlooks on the current situation of China facing the algorithmic black box in social media platforms.