The Chinese regime has launched a number of online government transparency initiatives to increase the volume of publicly available information about the activities of lower-level governments. By ...analyzing online content produced by local government officials to fulfill these transparency requirements—a random sample of 1.92 million county-level government web pages—this paper shows how websites are commandeered by local-level officials to construct their public image. The majority of content on government websites emphasizes either the competence or benevolence of county executives, depending on where leaders are in the political tenure cycle. Early tenure county executives project images of benevolence by emphasizing their attentiveness and concern toward citizens. Late tenure executives project images of competence by highlighting their achievements. These findings shift the nature of debates concerning the role of the Internet in authoritarian regimes from a focus on regime–society interactions to an examination of dynamics among regime insiders. By focusing on communication and the flow of information between upper-level leaders and lower-level regime agents, this paper reveals how the Internet becomes a vehicle of self-promotion for local politicians.
Strategies of Chinese State Media on Twitter Fan, Yingjie; Pan, Jennifer; Sheng, Jaymee
Political communication,
01/2024, Letnik:
ahead-of-print, Številka:
ahead-of-print
Journal Article
Recenzirano
How do state-controlled broadcasters reach foreign publics to engage in public diplomacy in the era of social media? Previous research suggests that features unique to social media, such as the ...ability to engage in two-way communication with audiences, provide state-controlled broadcasters new opportunities for online public diplomacy. In this paper, we examine what strategies were used by four Chinese state-controlled media outlets on Twitter to reach foreign publics as the Chinese Communist Party worked to expand its public diplomacy and international media outreach efforts. We find that all outlets increased the volume and diversity of content while none engaged in interactive, two-way communication with audiences, and none appeared to artificially inflate their follower count. One outlet, China Global Television Network, made outsized gains in followership, and it differs from the other Chinese outlets in that it was rebranded, it disseminated a relatively lower share of government-mandated narratives pertaining to China, and the tone of its reporting was more negative. These results show that during a period when Chinese state-controlled broadcasters gained followers on Twitter, outlets made limited use of features unique to social media and instead primarily used social media as a broadcast channel.
The 2012 and 2020 US Multi-Society Task Force postpolypectomy guidelines have recommended progressively longer surveillance intervals for patients with low-risk adenomas (LRAs). These guidelines ...require data from past colonoscopies. We examined the impact of the 2012 guidelines for second surveillance on clinical practice, including the availability of prior colonoscopy data, with the aim of informing the implementation of the 2020 guidelines.
We identified surveillance colonoscopies at Stanford Health Care and the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System in 3 periods: preguideline (March–August 2012), postguideline (January–June 2013), and delayed postguideline (July–September 2017). We collected data on the most recent previous colonoscopy, findings at the study entry surveillance colonoscopy, and recommendations for subsequent surveillance.
Among 977 patients, the most recent prior colonoscopy data were available in 78% of preguideline, 78% of postguideline, and 61% of delayed postguideline cases (P < .001). The fraction of surveillance colonoscopy reports that deferred recommendations awaiting pathology increased from 6% to 11% in preguideline and postguideline to 59% in delayed postguideline cases (P < .001). Overall adherence to guidelines for subsequent surveillance was similar in all 3 periods (54%–67%; P = .089). In the postguideline and delayed postguideline periods combined, a 10-year subsequent surveillance interval was recommended in 0 of 29 cases with LRA followed by normal surveillance colonoscopy.
In patients undergoing surveillance, prior colonoscopy data were not always available and recommendations were often deferred awaiting pathology. Adherence to subsequent surveillance guidelines was suboptimal, especially for LRA followed by normal colonoscopy. Strategies addressing these gaps are needed to optimize implementation of the updated 2020 postpolypectomy guidelines.
Abstract
China after Mao is typically characterized as a country where economic opportunities are based on merit instead of ideological conformity. However, the salience of ideology has grown under ...the rule of Xi Jinping. Using a large-scale resume audit experiment and a conjoint survey experiment of hiring managers in China, we find that firms in China do not reward job candidates for expressing conformity to the ideology of the regime, but job candidates who express support for Western democracy are less employable. Results suggest that firms in innovative industries designated as strategically important by the Chinese regime (e.g., artificial intelligence) penalize support for Western democracy by the largest magnitude while the remaining firms in innovative industries do not penalize political non-conformity.
To show the utility of MRI and histology in diagnosing rare cases of trigeminal hypertrophic interstitial neuropathy (HIN).
A 57-year-old African-American woman presented with a 4-year history of ...right eye proptosis with tearing, headaches, and worsening right-sided trigeminal neuralgia symptoms and jaw pain. HIV and diabetes tests were negative and thyroid function was normal. MRI identified abnormal thickening of all trigeminal nerve divisions and proptosis secondary to right trigeminal nerve V1 division enlargement. The excised tissue contained S-100 positive Schwann cells in an onion-bulb pattern. Headaches resolved, but proptosis and mild trigeminal neuralgia remained 1 year post-surgery.
Trigeminal HIN is very rare, but presents as chronic progressive ocular symptoms with trigeminal neuralgia. Trigeminal nerve hypertrophy is identified by MRI and confirmed histopathologically by detection of Schwann cells in an onion bulb formation.
China’s Ideological Spectrum Pan, Jennifer; Xu, Yiqing
The Journal of politics,
01/2018, Letnik:
80, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The study of ideology in authoritarian regimes—of how public preferences are configured and constrained—has received relatively little scholarly attention. Using data from a large-scale online ...survey, we study ideology in China. We find that public preferences are weakly constrained, and the configuration of preferences is multidimensional, but the latent traits of these dimensions are highly correlated. Those who prefer authoritarian rule are more likely to support nationalism, state intervention in the economy, and traditional social values; those who prefer democratic institutions and values are more likely to support market reforms but less likely to be nationalistic and less likely to support traditional social values. This latter set of preferences appears more in provinces with higher levels of development and among wealthier and better-educated respondents. These findings suggest that preferences are not simply split along a proregime or antiregime cleavage and indicate a possible link between China’s economic reform and ideology.
Han Zhang and Jennifer Pan respond to comments on their article CASM: A Deep-Learning Approach for Identifying Collective Action Events with Text and Image Data from Social Media (same journal issue).
Research shows that government-controlled media is an effective tool for authoritarian regimes to shape public opinion. Does government-controlled media remain effective when it is required to ...support changes in positions that autocrats take on issues? Existing theories do not provide a clear answer to this question, but we often observe authoritarian governments using government media to frame policies in new ways when significant changes in policy positions are required. By conducting an experiment that exposes respondents to government-controlled media—in the form of TV news segments—on issues where the regime substantially changed its policy positions, we find that by framing the same issue differently, government-controlled media moves respondents to adopt policy positions closer to the ones espoused by the regime regardless of individual predisposition. This result holds for domestic and foreign policy issues, for direct and composite measures of attitudes, and persists up to 48 hours after exposure.
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