Punctuations and diversity: exploring dynamics of attention allocation in China’s E-government agenda

Abstract

ABSTRACT Existing literature regarding punctuated equilibrium theories (PET) and agenda diversity has examined the patterns of cross-domain attention allocation based on western democracies; however, few studies have systematically discussed the situation within a specific policy domain in transitioning countries. To address this research gap, this study empirically explored the punctuations and diversity in attention allocation within China’s national e-government issue from 2001 to 2018. By employing the latent Dirichlet allocation topic model to analyse relevant articles on e-government in the People’s Daily, we derived 10 distinct dimensions hidden in the corpora and constructed an original dataset of the e-government agenda. The empirical findings revealed that the information processing in the domain of the e-government in China are leptokurtic, and a gradual decrease in the intensity of punctuations with the enhancement of central coordination and civic participation was also observed. We also found that the dynamics of attention diversity partially followed the theoretical expectations of classic scholarships. By examining patterns of attention allocation across multiple dimensions within a certain policy, our findings speak to literature on PET and agenda diversity and increases the externality of relevant theories derived from the cross-domain analysis.