TY - JOUR
T1 - China’s media organisations’ adoption of the WeChat public platform
T2 - news flow network, exploitation and exploration
AU - Sun, Jingyi
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Media Management and Transformation Centre.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - This paper takes a longitudinal perspective to explore China’s media organisations’ adoption of the WeChat public platform. Drawing from theories of organisation ecology and strategic exploitation/exploration, this paper identifies three strategies that media outlets adopted: borrowing other media outlets’ content to form news flow networks, exploiting existing news production routines and exploring new forms of content creation by incorporating social media sources. Stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM) were built to understand how thirty-five media outlets built news flow networks on WeChat and how such networks coevolved with exploitation and exploration. The results showed that media outlets could mobilise audiences and exhibit identity through news flow networks; although exploitation reduced organisations’ dependence on the community, exploration was not found to make media outlets more popular.
AB - This paper takes a longitudinal perspective to explore China’s media organisations’ adoption of the WeChat public platform. Drawing from theories of organisation ecology and strategic exploitation/exploration, this paper identifies three strategies that media outlets adopted: borrowing other media outlets’ content to form news flow networks, exploiting existing news production routines and exploring new forms of content creation by incorporating social media sources. Stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM) were built to understand how thirty-five media outlets built news flow networks on WeChat and how such networks coevolved with exploitation and exploration. The results showed that media outlets could mobilise audiences and exhibit identity through news flow networks; although exploitation reduced organisations’ dependence on the community, exploration was not found to make media outlets more popular.
KW - WeChat
KW - exploitation
KW - exploration
KW - news flow network
KW - news media
KW - organisation ecology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85095798172&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85095798172&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/16522354.2020.1840711
DO - 10.1080/16522354.2020.1840711
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85095798172
SN - 1652-2354
VL - 18
SP - 267
EP - 284
JO - Journal of Media Business Studies
JF - Journal of Media Business Studies
IS - 4
ER -