Search

In recent years, network communication research became gradually popular along with the upsurge of new media. It has since turned into a new focus in the communication field. By studying network communication papers from 1995 to 2006, this paper makes a relatively objective quantitative analysis of present research and the latest explorations of network communication in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Academic contention occurs when research evidence is amenable to more than one interpretation. China has a long tradition of Shang Que (商榷), in which authors argue for their preferred interpretation. The modern form of this tradition is the Shang Que article, which often takes the form of research papers in Chinese-language journals and which tends to be question-oriented. Shang Que articles usually take the views of a particular author or article as the focus of independent and complete criticism by another, independent, academic. This paper explains the role of Shang Que articles in Chinese scholarship and their influence on international academia. Design/methodology/approach: A bibliometric analysis was used to explore the characteristics and evolution of Chinese Shang Que articles using 30,577 articles published between 1979 and 2018. Microsoft Excel and Gephi were used for data analysis and visualization. Findings: Findings suggest a decline in the number of Shang Que articles and an increase in the number of co-authors. Shang Que articles remained particularly prominent in Philosophy and Humanities and Social Sciences, where they focused on local issues such as classical Chinese, the Sinicization of Marxism and Chinese literature. This suggests that the number of Shang Que articles is related to the degree of internationalization of a research field. Originality/value: Shang Que articles, which have been influenced by academic paradigms in English, are a fusion of China's Shang Que tradition and of the modern academic system. Through considering Shang Que articles, this paper explores the benefits of local academic traditions in non-English-speaking cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shaanxi is one of China's most important cradles of civilization. The main vein of Chinese culture is rich history and culture, and brilliant red culture embodies the essence of socialist core values. It is still relatively weak to deeply analyze the related research of Shaanxi Province's cultural province construction on the basis of studying the achievements of cultural development in foreign countries and China and combining with the reality of Shaanxi Province. In this paper, a BPNN (BP neural network) model is selected to study the comprehensive evaluation of tourism competitiveness of smart tourism cities, and the software is used to realize the simulation of the comprehensive evaluation system of tourism competitiveness of smart tourism cities, which more comprehensively and objectively reflects the level of comprehensive competitiveness of each city. It is believed that there are some problems in Shaanxi regional cultural communication, such as insufficient exploration of content resources, insufficient communication channels, and low audience awareness, hoping to provide ideas and reference for further exploring the promotion of cultural communication power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hunan Huagu Opera belongs to China's valuable intangible cultural heritage, which contains a strong atmosphere of folk life and has important inheritance and preservation value. This paper takes the contemporary dissemination of Hunan Huagu Opera as the research object, and uses the theories and research methods of Opera and communication Science to explore the connection between the original art represented by Hunan Huagu Opera and social communication. In the current communication context, Huagu Opera, a Chinese folk opera culture, links the relationship between native art and social communication and shows a two-way construction process of local culture and social interaction. However, it cannot be ignored that Hunan Huagu Opera also faces many communication obstacles in the process of inheritance, and it is necessary to further combine the development and communication needs of opera culture and art to explore solutions. It is should to increase policics support, focus on brand awareness, encourage innovative expressions, and apply flexible, high-quality digital technology interaction communication strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for paper for communication research on the important health issues in China is presented.

Objective: Circular RNA (circRNA) is of significant interest in genetic research. The aim of this study was to assess global trends in circRNA research production in order to shed new light on future research frontiers. Materials and Methods: In this retrospective study, we conducted a literature search using the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database on March 21, 2019 to retrieve publications from 2007 to 2018. Excel 2013, CiteSpace V, and VOSviewer were used to evaluate bibliometric features that included publication output, countries/regions, institutions, journals, citation frequency, H-index, and research hotspots. Results: Global cumulative publication output on circRNA consisted of 998 papers with a total citation of 28595 during 2007-2018. China, the US, and Germany were the most prolific countries. China ranked first in H-index (60 times) and citations (13333 times). The most productive institution was Nanjing Medical University with 73 papers. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (impact factor [IF]2017:2.559) ranked first among journals in the number of publications (64 papers). The keywords shifted from "sequence", "intron", and "splice-site" to "transcriptome", "microRNA sponge", "exon circularization", and "circRNA biogenesis" overtime. The burst keywords "transcriptome", "microRNA sponge", "exon circularization", and "circRNA biogenesis" were the latest frontiers by 2018. Conclusion: This is a relatively novel bibliometric analysis to inspect research related to circRNA. The results show that publications have continuously increased in the past decade. China, the US, and Germany were the leading countries/regions in terms of quantity. Recent studies on topics related to circRNA biogenesis and function should be closely followed in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, scholarly journals are affiliated with the particular governing organizations that house them. This process of what can be characterized as danweization has given the editors of these journals almost unchallenged power, prompting the contributors to seek their favor through guanxi networks. Drawing on fieldwork and in-depth interviews with key journal editors in media studies, this paper aims to explore the configuration of guanxi networks, the dynamics of guanxi practice in the gatekeeping process, and the implications of this practice for communication scholarship. We found that guanxi functions as a multi-layered particularism to facilitate the flow of information, to advance the priority of given papers, and to increase the rate at which such papers are published. In consequence, these journals publish a disproportionate number of articles by colleagues from the same sponsoring danwei. The operation of guanxi networks is so entrenched that it raises questions about the integrity of knowledge production and academic autonomy in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the central role of communication within teams and jobs satisfaction of the participants in business enterprises. "How communication in the team affects job satisfaction of the team member" shaped the design of the study in developing several propositions. Design/methodology/approach – The paper opted for an exploratory study using semi-structured interviews at two locations, Singapore and Dalian, China. The respondents had taken part in one team, at least, in the past. These respondents were professionals, junior managers, and sales/marketing executives. The data were organized according to the contextual framework developed in the study. The contextual frame was developed by combing attention-structure with the four phases in a typical team. The concepts and developed constructs were mapped to reach testable propositions. Findings – The paper provides an empirical insight on the relationship between formal teams and their members' job satisfaction. The findings are noted in two stages. First, formal teams, positive attitude to conflicts, effective conflict resolution, and "opinion-count" of the members positive influence job satisfaction of the member. Second, it appears that "opinion-count" may have more positive effects than any other concept. Therefore, it is concluded that "opinion-count" in communication mediates the other effects in team communication for job satisfaction. Research limitations/implications – First, the research is based on limited interviews in only two locations, Singapore and Dalian, China; second, the study is a qualitative one. It lacks generalization. Third, it is acknowledged that the author's own interpretation may have influenced the findings -- it is often unavoidable. Fourth, the number of propositions is limited in the framework. Finally, the participants' demographic factors are missing from the analysis. For instance, education, age, professional position, technical background, and financial rewards can be included in a future quantitative study. Practical implications – It is known that employees' job satisfaction can lead to better engagement of the employees in the organization. More participation of the employee can be productive for the organization. Since job satisfaction and innovation appear to be highly positively correlated, increasing one can increase the other. Business enterprises lose millions of dollars every year because of the disengagement of their employees. Improving the engagement of employees can improve their productivity. Originality/value – Based on inductive methodology, this article links the individual employee's opinion-count at work place and job satisfaction of the employee. These findings are important in the sense that employees' engagement at work and well being depends on their satisfaction. Therefore, both the employer and employee can benefit from these findings. The study provides a new solution to an old problem. It suggests that opinion-count is more effective in increasing job satisfaction than other policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the emergence of mobile Internet and social media, human relationship has evolved into a new form due to the much broader reach and more efficient communications enabled by information technology. This paper examines the communication pattern and impact on social group in the context of a Chinese popular mobile social media app. It analyzes a dataset that comprised of the information about sending and receiving messages by 10,000 users over one month period. It found a strong temporal pattern of a significant difference between Monday and other days: the least frequent usages on Monday among the week. The average number of friends a user has messaging contacts with is about 2, far less than the number of friends a user has in total, which can reflect the attributes of users maintaining their social network andfriendship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trend of globalization has led to a strong demand for the culture-specific or emic approach in scholarly research. It is the purpose of this paper to provide an opportunity for scholars to have their voices on the issues of indigenous scholarship. The paper consists of four essays examining the theme from four aspects, namely, the centrality of culture and communication, the Asiacentric communication paradigm, the development of Chinese communication theories, and an indigenous view of the study of resilience. It is hoped that the paper will contribute to the better understanding of indigenous scholarship and further provide a possible direction for the future investigation in this line of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discussed how to advance journalism and mass communication research in China under the International context, that is, to conduct research with an international standard, and to merge the research results of the Chinese scholars into the body of literature utilized by International scholars. It introduced the approaches to train scholars with an international vision and the capacity to conduct high quality research through taking courses and participating in research projects. The paper evaluated the roles of Western-educated scholars in China, the established scholars overseas, and overseas exchange and training programs in advancing journalism and mass communication research in China under the international context. The paper proposed strategies to conduct research according to the international standard, including learning and understanding the criteria of high quality journalism and mass communication research with a social science approach, setting research goals consistent to the international standard, and establishing a peer-review system to raise the quality of research through constructive criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New topic modeling technique has been increasingly used in research of communication for quick discovery of latent topics that are spread across huge volumes of text. This work intends to analyze and compare the topics automatically generated by Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). The data for building LDA model in this work is based on 38,124 articles published from 1991 through 2016 in one of the world's most influential political and economic magazines, The Economist. The retrieved documents for generating topics are divided into three countries of the UK, the US, and China in order to observe topical differences between these ingroup or outgroup countries in The Economist coverage. The work analyzes interpretability, overall weight distributions, and historical changing patterns of the topics using LDA model diagnostics. It discusses the hot or increasing trends using regression coefficient. The work also tentatively explores the relationship between the media agenda and events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing evidence reveals that social media visibility produces paradoxes in which actors simultaneously confront contradictory, even mutually exclusive, conditions. Yet limited research has explored how actors perceive these paradoxes and manage resulting tensions in a politically repressive context. Ubiquitous government oversight, information control, and Internet censorship may uniquely complicate paradoxes of visibility in non-Western environments. To address this gap, this research reconsiders the paradox(es) of visibility in politically restrictive contexts. Interview data from 50 social entrepreneurs and two field experts in China reveal the antecedents to visibility paradoxes, and suggest three novel forms of paradoxes: resource investment , public attention , and social change. We also show these paradoxes are interdependent such that one may be amplified or attenuated by the other paradoxes. Further, we identify three strategies for responding to these paradoxes and suggest implications for vulnerable actors in maintaining a public profile, especially in sensitive sociopolitical environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research report, based on communication literature, is organized in five sections: 1. Presenting the background information to understand what Chinese communication scholars have been conducting during 2010-2012 regarding communication research, teaching and application. In 2010, the research programming and academic orientation of communication research in China is to enhance the dissemination of research practice, applicability, theories, scientificity and internationalization in the field. 2. Education Emphasized. In the view of the present situation, advanced education in journalism and communication in China has been moving forward, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, by 2011 November, the educational units in journalism and communication reached 982, in which 40 are communication education units. 3. Publications Increased: In the past, 451 books on communication research, 1970 papers or articles in academic journals, 49 translation books and 32 translations from English into Chinese have been published. 4. Seminars and Academic Exchanges: During the period of time, seminars and academic exchange activities constantly unfold. The conferences and seminars of communication study kept being held, giving more attention to new media issues than before. In total 54 conferences, 19 conferences are about new media, or 35% of the total conferences. 5. Problems: This report would show that the achievements of the discipline or problems that involve the development in subfields are mainly reflected in social influence, creative theory and applications of communication study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper selects 2013 Jilin "6 • 3" fire accident as a case study in crisis communication scholars Coombs theory in crisis response strategy orientation based on semantic analysis of the government microblog in Jilin "6 • 3" fire accident in various stages of crisis response strategy and performance, and through quantitative research paradigm to assess the government micro microblog crisis response strategy and performance, and actively explore the role of government microblog in the spread of the crisis to try to provide future crisis response reference and reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since multi-destination travel has become a general choice, establishing and organizing a reasonable travel itinerary is considered to be the focus for both supply and demand sides of the tourism market. Many tourists look forward to maximizing the potential benefits of multi-destination travel because of time demands and geographic spatial limitations. Moreover, tourism enterprises, destination management organizations and local governments aim to integrate different resource types and levels in an effort to realize synergies through cooperation. Earlier travel itinerary research focused on the description of itineraries; however, it did not investigate supplementary issues. In earlier literature, travel itinerary research can be divided into two categories: single destination travel and multi-destination travel. However, with the introduction of different methodologies such as surveys, content analysis, geographic information systems and network analysis, travel itinerary research attracted attention from different perspectives. Based on a critical literature review of travel itinerary and spatial pattern travel behaviors and taking China' s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region 5A and 4A scenic spots as an example of a destination network, this paper explores the inherent mechanism of travel itinerary formation from two perspectives: whole network and ego network. The methods used in the study included a questionnaire survey and social network analysis. From a whole network perspective, in the Xinjiang region the degree of centrality is highest in the following scenic spots: Kanas scenic spot, Tianshan heavenly lake scenic spot, Turpan grape valley scenic spot, Hi kazak autonomous prefecture of narat scenic spot, Turpan grape valley amusement park, Qiu ci lu zhou ecological paradise, The id kah folk culture scenic area. The structural hole index is highest in the following areas: Kanas scenic spot, Tianshan heavenly lake scenic spot, Turpan grape valley scenic spot, Hi kazak autonomous prefecture of narat scenic spot. From the ego network perspective, the mean of centrality and structural hole resulted in a division of the destination network into 4 quadrants: Quadrant I (low centrality and high structural hole), Quadrant II (high centrality and high structural hole), Quadrant III ( high centrality and low structural hole) and Quadrant IV ( low centrality and low structural hole). There is no scenic destination in the study area located in Quadrant I; Kanas scenic spot, Turpan grape valley scenic spot and Tianshan heavenly lake scenic spot are located in Quadrant II; Ili kazak autonomous prefecture of narat scenic spot, Qiu ci lu zhou ecological paradise, The id kah folk culture scenic area, Turpan grape valley amusement park are located in Quadrant III; Heshuo golden sands, Kucha palace, Qapqal autonomous county xibe folk custom park, Urumqi shuimogou park, Xinjiang man street folk museum, Urumqi hongshan park are located in Quadrant IV. It is worth noting that some destinations are structural equivalence within the network. The results of the network analysis showed that Xinjiang has initially formed a destination network with Kanas as its center. Centrality and structural holes, the main network indicators, are regarded as the key factors for diversified travel itineraries. According to centrality and structural hole implications derived from social network theory, suggestions are provided for how to outline and manage scientific travel itineraries in the context of the destination network. Finally, the study conclusions extends the existing literature on the spatial patterns of travel behavior, enriches current travel itinerary research methodologies and perspectives, and delivers significant guidance for multi-destination travel itinerary management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the texts about Han Han in the newspapers of "Southern Weekend", "Southern People Weekly" and "Southern Weekly" from the year of 2008 to 2012 by adopting the methods of content analysis and discourse analysis. The newspaper coverage through the competition of different issues has constituted the image of Han changing from a "literary youth" to a "political youth" as well as a "network opinion leader" to a "public intellectuals", who has been a trendy, controversial idol and a best-selling writer as well. The metaphor of "China's public intellectuals" represents complicated social relations and power capital. It is worthy of reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We review the state of research on human-environment interaction in Holocene China. • We demonstrate the benefits of a multidisciplinary, regionally focused approach. • We conclude datasets must be local and specific, and integrate data on multiple scales. • China is large, well-documented, and critical for understanding social-natural systems. This paper reviews recent archaeological research on human-environment interaction in the Holocene, taking continental China as its geographic focus. As China is large, geographically diverse, and exceptionally archaeologically and historically well-documented, research here provides critical insight into the functioning of social-natural systems. Based on a broad review of the field as well as recent advances and discoveries, the authors reflect on research themes including climate change and adaptive systems theory, spatial and temporal scale, anthropogenic environmental change, risk management and resilience, and integration of subdisciplines. These converge on three overarching conclusions. First, datasets relevant to climate change and ancient human-environment interaction must be as local and specific as possible, as the timing of environmental change differs locally, and the human response is highly dependent on local social and technological conditions. Second, the field still needs more robust theoretical frameworks for analyzing complex social-natural systems, and especially for integrating data on multiple scales. Third, for this work to contribute meaningfully to contemporary climate change research, effective communication of research findings to the public and to scientists in other disciplines should be incorporated into publication plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — This study seeks to develop a general framework for evaluating communication platforms in e-commerce, and then apply the framework to investigate what factors have impeded m-commerce from taking off in the specific context of China. Design/methodology/approach — The paper proposes a three-dimension framework for evaluating a communication platform in e-commerce, which features reach, richness, and costs of communications as its salient characteristics. Grounded on the framework, a comparative analysis is conducted using data from a survey sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce of China. The analysis, from the user's perspective, compares facilitators and inhibitors for using communication platforms in two different contexts, the mobile communication platform in m-commerce vs the fixed communication platform in the "classical" e-commerce. Findings — The study finds that, compared with e-commerce over the fixed communication platform, the m-commerce in China enjoys relatively great communication reach but suffers from relatively low communication richness. In the mean time, costs of communications do not seem to be a major barrier for m-commerce growth. Originality/value — The three-dimension framework can serve as an underlying model not only to evaluate currently available communication platforms for e-commerce, but also to address economic calculus of benefits and costs of emerging communication platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the US origins of the field of PRC history. It argues that research on PRC history is widely derived from an approach to knowledge that predates area studies: the theory that societies can be controlled and changed through the transformation of human cognition—referred to as "public opinion," "values," "culture," "political culture," "tradition," or "belief"—by nonviolent means. The author calls this approach to knowledge the values paradigm. A separate, but related argument is that this paradigm has proven more important than the availability or content of new sources in determining how PRC history has been written. The aim behind these arguments is twofold: to highlight the intellectual debt (or burden) that links PRC history, via area studies, to policy science; and to elucidate other ways of guiding research in place of the increasingly exhausted values paradigm–based approach. The conclusions they lead to are that historical and social scientific explanations of political change in China have become intellectually dependent on the abstraction of mass consciousness, and that this abstraction has been used to obscure the endemic violence of Maoism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, I planned to apply child-centred research methods to conduct creative workshops in the school and participant observations in family settings. Keywords: Left-behind children; social media; long-distance communication; family relationships; remote research EN Left-behind children social media long-distance communication family relationships remote research 126 129 4 03/08/21 20210201 NES 210201 This commentary discusses various ethical and practical issues involved in the modification of the research design of my doctoral project, as a result of COVID-19, which aims to examine the role of social media within separated families in the context of internal migration in China, and find out how left-behind children use social media to communicate with their migrant parents. [Extracted from the article]

At a time when the academic spotlight focuses on "China's rising" in the metaphorical "global village," this article draws attention to China's real villages. It sets the context for a research agenda foregrounding the relevance of an urban-rural relationship perspective for a political economy of communication that has systematically prioritized the labor-capital relationship in the development of global capitalism. Starting with a personal biographical account and a reexamination of the place of the rural in scholarship on communication, modernization, and global capitalism, the article proceeds to foreground urban-rural relations in understanding the historical trajectory of China's engagement with global capitalism and the role of communication and culture within such a trajectory. It then focuses on Heyang as a digitally networked, globalized, and globalizing Chinese village and introduces Global to Village: Grounding Communication Research in Rural China as both a transnational research project and a pedagogical praxis in global citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article calls for the submission of papers on Chinese media/communication research.

These are supposed to be the closing remarks of the whole enquiry. However, it seems that any unilateral conclusion is not able to summarize the findings from 13 research groups worldwide, lasting nearly two years, around the international communication impact of Beijing Olympics. So an open discussion and interpretation on the Intercultural Communication in the Beijing Olympic Games would be the best choice and this article brings together the final remarks from 12 specialists we invite with different research interests and background in humanities and social sciences to offer an academic criticism on intercultural communication, the Olympic movement and the Chinese international communication strategy as the host country. The discussion is about but not limited to the relationship between media and Olympics, the communication complexity of the global mega-event, the communication strategy of China from the experience of Beijing 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a multiple-method approach that combines content analysis and experiment, this study tested the first three steps of the process model of framing in China's specific media environment, in which media have a special relationship with the ruling group and the audiences. The study supports the first two steps of the process model and found that the ruling group's view of religion greatly shapes the media's framing of religion, which influences the audiences' individual framing. The third step that predicts a correlation between the audiences' individual framing and their individual political attitude, however, is not supported. An interesting phenomenon appeared: students not exposed to the newspaper articles tended more to support the government's dealing with religion as a political issue than did those exposed to one or two newspaper articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes that partners who communicate mutual respect to each other develop integrative interaction that is a foundation for innovation. Structural equation analysis suggests that reflecting upon and improving interaction between supplier and customer organizations can contribute to resource exchange between partners that results in innovation in supply chain partnerships. Results also indicate that the confirmation of social face is an important antecedent to these useful integrative interaction patterns. These findings were interpreted as reaffirming the value of relationships for making partnerships effective and that the constructive application of the value of social face can promote open discussion and innovation in China. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how urban and rural children in Mainland China learn about new products and services, and their attitudes toward different communication channels for market and product information. A survey of 1,977 children aged six to 13 in four Chinese urban cities and four rural provinces was conducted in March 2003 to May 2004. Results indicated that there are significant differences in perception of personal and commercial communication sources among urban and rural children. As predicted by Rogers’ and Schramm's theories, urban children found commercial sources more useful and credible than rural children in obtaining information about new products and services. Rural children perceived personal sources more useful and credible than urban children. John's theory of consumer socialization was supported. Older children found parents and grandparents less useful and less credible than younger children. Older children also found commercial sources more useful and credible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the applicability of the diffusion of innovations theory to internet development in rural China by examining internet diffusion and usage patterns in two rural areas of China's Gansu Province. Its ethnographic research design allowed the researchers to interact with the rural people under study and obtain first-hand data on their adoption and usage of the internet. The results show that in the context of rural China, where the local economy and infrastructure can hardly sustain such an advanced technology as the internet, the diffusion and usage of the internet are determined not much by the will of individuals, but by the change agency. As the weakest social class in terms of their share and control of social resources, Chinese farmers as individuals do not play an important role in the adoption of the internet, which tends to be the result of organizational initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study assessed how people residing in China evaluate the emotional support they receive and provide, as well as whether gender-related influences on emotional sup- port exhibited in American samples are also present among Chinese. Participants (253 native Chinese) responded to a questionnaire that assessed the value placed on emotional support skills, the importance of goals typically pursued in emotional support situations, the appropriateness of distinct coping strategies for providing emotional support, and the sensitivity of varied messages intended to provide comfort. Results indicated that whereas Chinese women rated emotional support skills as more important than Chinese men, women and men differed only slightly in their evaluations of the importance of dif- ferent support goals, the appropriateness of different coping strategies, and the sensitivity of different messages. These results are compared to those obtained in previous research with samples of Americans and sojourning Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the impact of perceptions of the opinions of others on political outspokenness in Hong Kong. Two related theories, the third-person effect and the spiral of silence, are tested in the context of public opinion regarding the Sino-British dispute over Hong Kong's political future. To estimate the potential influence of perceived public opinion on political outspokenness during this political crisis, a representative telephone survey of 660 respondents in Hong Kong was conducted in November 1993. As hypothesized by the third-person effect, perceptions of the influence of media reports about the Sino-British dispute on others were found to be consistently greater than perceptions of influence on self. Similar to previous findings, respondents with a higher level of education were more likely to believe that the mass media influence others more than themselves. The study also found empirical support for the spiral of silence hypothesis. Politically unconcerned respondents were less willing to voice their political opinions publicly when they perceived the majority opinion not to be on their side. Findings also indicate that the third-person effect indirectly influences the spiral of silence process through its impact on perceptions of public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]