The Roles Of Participation And Emotion In Media Event’s Social Integration Mechanism

Dayan and Katz’s theorization of media events continues to serve as a popular conceptual framework for understanding the ability of mainstream media to articulate society’s values and renew citizens’ allegiance to the social center.On the 30 th anniversary of the media event,this study attempts to primarily understand how mainstream media achieves large-scale social consensus and its effect by setting media events through short videos against the new media era.Using a national sample of participants of main streams’ short videos during the media event of 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games(N=400),this article conducted a survey examine the roles of valence and arousal,two dimensions of emotion,and that of national identity in the social integration function.The survey comprehensively uses questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews,combining quantitative and qualitative research,to empirically investigate the roles of participation and emotion in media event’s social integration mechanism.The independent variables of this study are participants of mainstream media’s short videos,including the frequency of likes,comments,forwarding and cross-media sharing.The dependent variables are perceived unity of participants,including measurement of the proximity,common fate,and good gestalt dimensions.The findings of this study showed the mediating effect of emotion on the relationship between participants of short videos and perceived unity,which was moderated by identity fusion.The following conclusions can be drawn from correlation and regression analysis.Emotional arousal and emotion valence were influence by participants of short videos.There was also an interaction effect between emotional valence and perceived unity,while no interaction effect between emotional arousal and perceived unity.