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Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 14:1 (2023) ► pp.23–46

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Disagreement strategies and institutional face attack in Chinese mainstream media editorial comments on Weibo

 | Jiangsu University of Science and Technology
Published online: 14 March 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.19016.xia
Abstract
This paper explores how readers of Chinese mainstream media editorials use disagreement strategies to attack the institutional face of the mainstream media organizations on Weibo. By quantitative and qualitative analysis, the disagreement strategies in Weibo comments were elaborated based on the logos-oriented and ethos-oriented distinction. It was found that logos-oriented disagreements were employed to criticize the content of the editorial, ethos-oriented ad-hominem disagreements were employed to attack the trustworthiness and impartiality of the mainstream media organizations, and ethos-oriented ad-personam disagreements were pure insults to express their negative emotions to the mainstream media organizations. The findings suggested that the online commenting space of Chinese mainstream media editorials is a public sphere of combined deliberation and liberal individualism. This study adds to existing literature the disagreement strategies used in online comments while shedding light on the role of online comments in the public sphere building in the Chinese social media context.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Online disagreement strategies
  • 3.Institutional face attack
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Data collection
    • 4.2A coding scheme
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Types and frequency of online disagreement strategies
    • 5.2Disagreement strategies and institutional face attack
      • 5.2.1Logos-oriented disagreements to criticize the content of the editorials
        • 5.2.1.1Counterclaim
        • 5.2.1.2Contradiction
        • 5.2.1.3Challenge
      • 5.2.2Ad-hominem disagreements attacking the trustworthiness of the media
      • 5.2.3Ad-hominem disagreements to attack the impartiality of the media
      • 5.2.4Ad-personam disagreements insulting the mainstream media organizations
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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