http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/5383 2013-04-30T20:35:34Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6505 Title: Growth model of online friendship and individual, dyadic, and network determinants Authors: Zhang, Lun ( 張倫) Abstract: The online social networking sites (SNSs), which have rocketed from technique engaging niche users into a dominant online communication platform engaging millions of users, may change the pattern of online interpersonal communication. The study found that dyadic characteristics and structural factors largely determined the behavior of friendship formation, rather than characteristics of users. The data of the current study are collected from one of the largest SNS platforms in China, coving the first two years (2006-07) since its inception, during which time most users of the SNS were college students. The dataset records an anonym zed ID, demographic characteristics, a list of bidirectional friends and the time of the friendship formation. In total, 10 million users and 200 million bidirectional ties are involved. Using polynomial logistic regression to fit the time path of friendship formation for each individual user, the study finds that the increase in the number of friends for each user typically follows a Logistic function with time, indicating that the growth of friends starts slowly at the beginning, speeds up rapidly after reaching a critical point, and then tapers off finally. More importantly, the trajectories appear uniformly, if not identically, across individuals who joined the social network at quite different points in time, suggesting a high degree of regularity in user behavior when forming friendship. This study further examines the growth trajectory of friendship of the entire SNS, and compares the resulting of global-level trajectory with the individual-level trajectories. Surprisingly, there emerges a strong self-similarity in the growth of friendship between the individual level and the global level, which reinforces the regularity of social friendship formation behavior. Although users show a similar time path of adding friends, there are substantial differences across individuals in the sheer size of their friendship networks. As the second research objective, the study examines the effects of three sets of factors, including characteristics of network structure, characteristics of dyadic friendship, and characteristics of individual users, on the likelihood of the friendship formation. Of the factors under study, Balance Structure and the Cohesiveness of User's Ego Network (which involves the user as the "ego-center" and only directly-related friends as other members of the network) are the two most dominant factors influencing the tie formation. Contrary to the prevailing theory of "Preferential Attachment" in the previous literature, friendship formation is positively related to Homophily of Degree (i.e, number of friends), which means that people make friends with similar (rather than famous) others. In addition, the Popularity of the user and his/her Experience with using the SNS has a negative effect on friendship formation, i.e., users with higher popularity or longer SNS using history are less likely to add new friends. Likewise, Homophily of Experience has also a negative effect on friendship formation in that users become increasingly inclined to establish friendship with those with different duration of experience with the SNS (i.e., veteran users are more likely to add new comers whereas new comers more likely to team up with veterans), which suggests that friendship formation is a dynamic process throughout which users change their friendship strategies over time. Finally, individual characteristics, such as Sex and level of online Self-Disclosure, do not have any significant effect on the tie formation, which in fact strengthens the importance of structural factors reported above. The findings of structural effects on friendship formation sheds some lights on social media marketing in the sense that online marketers could choose marketing information initiators according to users network positions, rather than users SNS usage frequency or motivation. In addition, this study also has some practical implications on SNS operators. Considering the strategy of retaining user loyalty, SNS operators should focused more on the friendship maintenance, such as encouraging the creation of user generated contents and developing tools to facilitate information sharing, rather than simply encouraging friendship formation since most users will stop adding new friends after they reach their saturation point. Notes: CityU Call Number: HM742 .Z44 2011; x, 181 leaves : ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2011.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-135) 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6504 Title: Manufacturing professional honor : journalism award institution as social control in China Authors: Huang, Shunming ( 黃順銘) Abstract: This dissertation investigates China‟s journalism award institution and its practice from the perspective of social control. It makes a central argument that the party-state enacts social control over news people by manufacturing journalism awards within the institutional framework of state corporatism. State corporatism explains the top-down control over official journalism awards, characterized by the strong vertical interactions (between peak organizations and their local members) on the one hand, and the weak or even lack of horizontal interactions (among local professional organizations at the same levels) on the other. The argument is elaborated as six dimensions: institutionalization, historical icon, opportunity structure, gatekeeping, ritual, and professional elites. Chapter 2 traces the history in which journalism awards were established as a formal institution of professional honor at the turn of the 1980s, alongside social transformation from the Maoist to post-Mao era. The clampdown on the democracy movement in 1989 marked a watershed, witnessing the tightening of control. Chapter 3 investigates how certain journalists were iconized as journalism awards. By placing these icons back into the historical contexts, the chapter uncovers the vicissitudes of their living and posthumous reputations, and their posthumous images constructed by the collective memory. Present-day news people neither identify uncritically with officially designated icons nor accept official professional interpellations at face value. Chapter 4 shows that official journalism awards have invented a set of institutional mechanisms to shape and manage the opportunities of professional honors, resulting in a particularistic type of opportunity structure. Chapter 5 performs a preliminary analysis of the gatekeeping practice. The judges sitting on the award committees are typically power-oriented and produce symbolic orders of honor that satisfy the propaganda authorities. Chapter 6 examines the ritual of official and non-official award ceremonies. Chapter 7 paints a quantitative portrait of the Changjiang & Taofen Award winners. Chapter 8 summarizes four basic social-control functions of journalism awards: indexing, purification, demonstration effect, and co-optation. It also reflects on three sets of relations revolving around journalism awards, to wit, press control and honorary control, journalism awards and journalistic excellence, and journalism award and media marketization. In sum, official journalism awards in China represent a state-corporatist model of professional honors, distinctive sharply from such professional-community models as the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Academy Award. Notes: CityU Call Number: PN5367.A87 H83 2011; viii, 220 leaves : ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2011.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-220) 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6134 Title: Coorientation between Hong Kong and mainland journalists on the integration of Hong Kong and mainland China Authors: Yan, Yan (嚴妍) Abstract: Hong Kong and Mainland China have undergone a difficult and painful process of integration since the British colony's handover to China under an unprecedented structure of "one country, two systems." Decades of separation has embedded in people in both societies different perceptions and orientations of each other, which have played a salient role in the integration process. Given the stringently controlled intra-country border, Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese journalists who are responsible for constructing realities of both societies on a daily basis stand out as key players in "coorientation. This study examined the perceptions and mutual perceptions of Hong Kong and Mainland journalists on four issues that are central to the integration of the two societies: the national identity of Hong Kong people, the political governance of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong-Mainland economic integration, and the perception of each other's general images. Based on the coorientation theory and previous coorientational studies, this study attempted to examine the coorientation patterns of two parallel groups of journalists from two interrelated but distinct societies. A questionnaire survey was conducted on a total of 323 journalists in Beijing (221) and Hong Kong (102). Questions were designed to examine the respective perception and estimated perception of the two groups on the same issues using the measurements of agreement (between perceptions of the two groups), congruency (between one group's perception and estimated perception) and accuracy (between one group's perception and the other group's estimated perception). The study found that the two groups of journalists demonstrated disagreement, incongruence and inaccuracy on most issues. On the cultural dimension of Hong Kong people's national identity, the result showed that the Hong Kong journalists held a strong "Hong Kong" identity. Although they identified with the cultural aspect of the national identity, they did not hold such an identity as strongly as their Mainland counterparts, and they also underestimated the Mainland side's strong affiliation. By contrast, the Mainland journalists accurately estimated the Hong Kong side's weaker agreement and reservations on this issue. On the political dimension of Hong Kong people's national identity, the two groups had fundamental disagreement with each other and estimated the other group to hold different perceptions from their own. On Hong Kong's political governance and specifically on the democratic prospect of Hong Kong under China's sovereignty, the two groups took opposite stands, with the Mainland side being optimistic whereas the Hong Kong side pessimistic. They estimated the other group to hold a different perception. The Mainland side underestimated Hong Kong's pessimism while the Hong Kong side expected little from the Mainland side on its support for this issue. On Hong Kong-Mainland economic integration, the two groups demonstrated a pattern of dissensus coorientation state in that they had an accurate knowledge of the other side's perception but didn't agree with each other. On perception of each other's general images, the Mainland journalists overestimated the Hong Kong side's agreement to the positive descriptions of Mainlanders" whereas the Hong Kong journalists underestimated the Mainland's positive impression of the Hong Kong people. This study contributes to the literature of coorientation by applying the theory to a broader cross-cultural context and adding new patterns to coorientation state systems. The conceptual framework it has tested can be applied to the general public at large and other social contexts. Notes: CityU Call Number: PN5369.H62 Y34 2009; xi, 260 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2009.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-248) 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6133 Title: National elite media discourses on globalization : comparing China with India Authors: Song, Jing (宋晶) Abstract: In the age of globalization, nation states have to negotiate with the neo-liberal world order, articulating national interest on the one hand and preserving national identity and sovereignty on the other. National media draw a world map for ordinary people and explain the relationship between globalization and their lives. Therefore one important way of examining the international discursive contestation is to look through national media's prisms to explore how the state acts as the repository of national interest. Chinese and Indian elite media discourses offer an illuminating pair for case comparison. This study attempts to investigate the differences between national media construction of globalization in China and India. Theoretically, this thesis argues that national media discursive construction is shaped and influenced by the national interest as defined by state elites located in a larger international political economy. Empirically, this study compared 1,004 editorials of three national newspapers-- the People's Daily, the Global Times, and the Hindu-- from 1996 to 2006. Besides, 185 editorials from 2000 to 2006 from the Times of India were included for further comparison. Content analysis and discourse analysis were applied; the former acts as the prelude to the latter. This study aimed to answer three research questions. (1) What is China and India located in the international political economy? (2) How do Chinese and Indian media construct globalization in line with these contexts? (3) What explain the similarities and differences in their media constructions? Content analysis revealed that the media in the two countries take a positive attitude towards globalization. Two media frames were prominent in referencing "globalization: namely, the "Interest" frame and the "Identity" frame. According to the two frames, I unpacked globalization into four issues: the international issues and the benefit-cost in the neo-liberal world order; the domestic conflicts and the contestation among various groups within state; the continuity and discontinuity between history and globalization; the boundary of the "other" and "us" and the construction of the others. The study finds that the Chinese media believe that China should accommodate to the global world in terms of economic development, but politically to fight against western hegemony to preserve China's autonomy and legitimacy. The Indian media focus more on military and security issues in the region and sub-continent; they hold a more critical attitude towards the international trade order than do the Chinese media. On the internal conflict issues that may arise from globalization, the Chinese media deemphasize the ill effects of globalization on disadvantaged groups; they emphasize overall national interests rather than specific interest of civil society and the people. The Indian media criticize the government for policy failure, where globalization is concerned, to take care of bad influences on people's lives. The study also finds that the Chinese media emphasize the historical continuity as if globalization provides a golden opportunity for China's rise to great-power status and to revive the past glory of Chinese civilization. In contrast, the Indian media emphasize the historical discontinuity and seldom refer to the splendid Indian history. At the same time, the Chinese media accept the U.S.'s domination in the global trade and economic system, and overlook the role of other developing countries. The Indian media mainly criticize the U.S. for hurting India's economy and military security, but hold a mixed feeling toward other third world countries. The study concludes that the Chinese and Indian media apply different frames in globalization discourse. The Chinese media approach globalization issues mainly in an interest frame, paying attention to economic development which can bolster elite power and save the Party from legitimacy crisis. The Indian media's construction of globalization is more identity-based and critical-oriented. China's economic reform has produced wealth for the elite, strengthened the regime's legitimacy, and stimulated national pride. In contrast, the Indian government's neoliberal policies are more often criticized because the ambivalent colonial history has shaped an uncertain national identity, and thus an ambiguous media attitude towards globalization. Notes: CityU Call Number: P96.L342 C66 2010; x, 190 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2010.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-190) 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z