Collaborative Networks,Framing And Agenda Setting:Research On International China-Related Disinformation Campaigns During COVID-19

In the context of the widespread use of computational propaganda,large-scale organized disinformation campaigns are frequently operated on social media platforms,causing adverse political,economic,and social impacts.During the COVID-19 pandemic,disinformation not only hinders effective health communication but also serves as a weapon in public opinion warfare against the targets.Social media is awash with disinformation about Chinese viruses and bioweapons,as well as the stigmatization of patients or regions,contaminating the information environment with conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific information.In this case,xenophobic racist incidents against Chinese or Asians have occurred in several regions.To fight against disinformation,this study comprehensively investigates the mechanism of China-related disinformation campaigns.Using computational communication methods,this study analyses the participants of China-related disinformation campaigns and their collaborative networks,discourse strategies and emotional communication effects,and agenda-setting patterns,and finds that:(1)Elite users of news and politics in the United States are the core participants,and a large number of social bots cooperate with human “water army” to spread disinformation through retweets and likes,while elite users in the categories of news,politics,academics,social activities and organizations publish original posts in the way of “topic collaboration”;(2)Disinformation works in the environment of “true-false interaction”,and the release of disinformation is Granger’s reason for the release of other relevant information.The central topics of disinformation are virus origin and conspiracy theories,and the “credibility” of disinformation is enhanced by means of “mutual verification of graphic and text”,which embodies the discourse strategies of conservatism and liberalism,and produces significant emotional differences;(3)Under the comprehensive use of network collaboration and discourse strategies,the disinformation campaign presents three different agenda-setting patterns,namely,the “elite usermediated” pattern,the “grassroot user-led” pattern and the “mixed pattern”.This shows the evolution of communication power structure under the development of social media,highlighting the formation of “disinformation order” promoted by the neoliberalism movement.