WeChat Moments Research Articles

Friendship jealousy and interaction needs: how mutual friend features affect users of WeChat Moments.

Many social networking services (SNSs) have features that highlight the common friends of pairs of users. Previous research has examined recommendation systems that use mutual friend metrics, but few scholars have studied how the existence of features related to mutual friends affects users in SNSs. To explore this issue further, we conducted interviews with 22 users of WeChat Moments to investigate how certain rules involving mutual friends affect users and how they deal with the issues that arise due to these rules. We found that the three Moments rules related to mutual friends (response visibility, response notifications, and information dissemination) can cause users to feel jealous, annoyed, and embarrassed. To prevent these negative experiences, users may reduce the amount of information they disclose or the frequency of their interactions in SNSs. Based on these findings, we propose several future directions for scholars and a small number of design suggestions aimed at assisting providers to satisfy users' interaction needs.

Relationship maintenance in WeChat moments: navigating social anxiety and the desire for belongingness

Relationship maintenance in WeChat moments: navigating social anxiety and the desire for belongingness

Interplay between Users and Social Media: “Pin” in WeChat Moments as an Example: From an Affordance Perspective

Interplay between Users and Social Media: “Pin” in WeChat Moments as an Example: From an Affordance Perspective

Research on the Privacy Paradox Behavior in WeChat Moments Based on Grounded Theory

As an important content sharing platform in social life, WeChat Moments has gradually shown a cold phenomenon, reflecting the characteristics of users privacy paradox behavior in posting Moments. In this context, there is a gap between users attitudes toward privacy on social media and their actual behaviors. This study collected data on the privacy paradox behavior of 20 users through semi-structured interviews and used NVivo12 software based on the three-level coding framework of grounded theory to discuss the factors influencing privacy paradox behavior in WeChat Moments users and to construct a model of influencing factors for privacy paradox behavior. The study found that social factors, user factors, platform factors, and situational factors all have a significant impact on the privacy paradox behavior of Moments users. The platform still needs to optimize user privacy protection functions and enhance users awareness of personal information protection.

China’s real estate agents’ persuasion realizations on WeChat Moments

Abstract Persuasion is a well-documented language phenomenon in the fields of rhetoric, communication, and sociopsychology. However, there is still a need for further research into persuasion on social media from a pragmatic perspective. The current research contributes to the existing literature on persuasion, particularly in virtual environments, by examining the tactics of online persuasion with a dataset of 409 excerpts from WeChat Moments. It examines the frequency and percentage of persuasive strategies deployed by fourteen Chinese real estate agents. Additionally, a qualitative analysis of each tactic is conducted, supported by specific examples. The findings indicate that, in increasing order of frequency, persuasion attempts on the participants’ WeChat Moments are primarily realized through rational, ethos, and emotional appeals. The determinants of this strategic inclination are examined with respect to the anonymity afforded by the Internet, media effect, community of practice and Chinese cultural particulars.

The Relationship Between Social Media Information Sharing Characteristics and Problem Behaviors Among Chinese College Students Under Recommendation Algorithms.

With the development of information technology and various social media, recommendation algorithms have increasingly more influence on users' social media usage. To date, there has been limited research focused on analyzing the impact of recommendation algorithms on social media use and their corresponding role in the development of problematic behaviors. The present study analyzes the impact of recommendation algorithms on college students' information sharing and internalizing, externalizing problem behaviors to address the aforementioned shortcomings. An online questionnaire survey was conducted among 34,752 college students in China. A latent profile analysis was conducted to explore the various behavioral patterns of Chinese college students' information sharing across the three social media platforms identified for this study. The Bolck-Croon-Hagenaars (BCH) method Regression Mixture Modeling was then used to analyze the differences in internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors among the different subgroups of Chinese college students. The level of information sharing by college students across different social media platforms could be divided into "WeChat Moments low-frequency information sharing", "middle-frequency comprehensive information sharing", "TikTok high-frequency information sharing", and "Sina Weibo high-frequency information sharing". Significant differences were observed regarding internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors among college students in different information-sharing subgroups. This study identified four subgroups with different information-sharing characteristics using latent profile analysis. Among them, college students who are in subgroup of social media information sharing influenced by recommendation algorithms exhibit higher frequency of information sharing and higher level of internalizing and externalizing problematic behaviors. These results expand our understanding of college students' social media usage and problem behaviors from a technological perspective. In future, the negative impacts of recommendation algorithms on college students can be reduced by improving their awareness of these algorithms and optimizing the algorithms themselves.

“The Painted Skin,” Face Changing, Digital Coliseums, and the Circular Theater: On Digital Existence in Social Media and WeChat Moments

“The Painted Skin,” Face Changing, Digital Coliseums, and the Circular Theater: On Digital Existence in Social Media and WeChat Moments

Online discourse and chronotopic identity work: A longitudinal digital ethnography on WeChat

This article presents a sociolinguistic analysis of online identity construction through the lens of chronotope. Based on a longitudinal digital ethnography spanning 2019–2022, we examined 253 WeChat Moments posts collected from a participant referred to as ‘Green’. Our aim is to understand how individuals with migration experiences tactically draw on multimodal and translingual resources to construct a coherent online persona amid offline mobility, change and discontent. Our research uncovers that Green’s posts normalise an ‘alternative reality’ for her online persona presentation, wherein her offline experiences are reconfigured into ‘invokable histories’ contributing to the creation of ‘chronotopic behavioural scripts’. This reconfiguration of time-spaces yields a ‘collaged’ identity continuity, particularly evident during periods of restricted physical mobility such as pandemic lockdowns. This study not only provides a methodological enhancement to sociolinguistic research on identity but also contributes to ongoing discussions on temporal-spatial reconfigurations in social media communication.

Gender Disparities in Self-Presentation on WeChat Moments

This study delved into the relationship between gender and self presentation in WeChat Moments, and analyzed gender patterns and differences through questionnaire data. Using Erving Goffman’s drama theory, self presentation in WeChat Moments is viewed as an online performance, in which users play their own roles and carefully manage their online image. WeChat Moments serve as an inclusive space where users of all genders can express themselves and participate in social networks. Research has found that regardless of gender, both male and female users actively participate in posting behavior on WeChat Moments. Although male posting frequency is slightly higher, this difference is not statistically significant. The survey also found that gender has no significant impact on the composition of personal social networks and unique content creation in WeChat Moments. This study provides important insights into the role of gender in social media usage and self presentation, enriching our understanding of digital social platforms.

Visual Rhetoric in Wechat Moments—A Research Based on Virtual Ethnography

As a typical representative, Wechat Moments highly integrates virtual sapce and real life, within which the communication mostly takes place between acquaintances. Therefore, Wechat Moments has become an important stage for individuals, especially college students, to express themselves and establish and manage their personal images. Self-compiled information, including various visual elements such as texts, photos, emojis, pictures etc. in Wechat Moments is often carefully designed and selected, which will have an ideological influence on the reader. Therefore, this paper takes the visual rhetoric theory as the theoretical framework, and the virtual ethnography as the research method, to investigate the behavior of college students in using Wechat Moments to achieve rhetorical purposes to establish their personal images. The results of the categorical analysis indicate that most of the people's Wechat Moments is about their daily life, generally for sharing or remembering, wanting to show their positive side of life. Then, the content analysis suggests that both the denotative meaning and the connotative meaning of the visual elements should be noticed. Finally, the rhetorical analysis provides an interpretation of the connotations of posting Wechat Moments.

Electronic Extinction: A Study on the Self Elimination Behavior of Graduate Students in WeChat Moments

Electronic Extinction: A Study on the Self Elimination Behavior of Graduate Students in WeChat Moments

Self‐praise on social media WeChat Moments in L1 and L2 Chinese

AbstractTo date, second language (L2) pragmatics research has predominantly focused on learners’ oral communication, with digital communication being much less examined. In addition, although L2 pragmatics has mainly investigated speech acts, self‐praise has not been examined from the L2 perspective. Therefore, this study investigates instances of self‐praise posted by learners of Chinese on social networking sites. Data were collected from 20 advanced learners of Chinese who were asked to share instances of self‐praise they posted on their WeChat Moments. Altogether, 61 learners’ self‐praise posts in L2 Chinese and 100 instances of self‐praise from 20 Chinese native speakers were collected. The learners’ Chinese self‐praise was analyzed in terms of different pragmatic strategies and emoji uses, with comparisons against the native speakers’ practices. Similarities and differences were analyzed between the two groups’ self‐praise strategies and their emoji use in self‐praise posts. The findings showed that the advanced learners were able to employ the three major types of self‐praise strategies in their self‐praise posts on WeChat Moments. However, their repertoires of individual self‐praise strategies and emojis were not as wide as those of native speakers. In addition, the learners showed divergences from the native speakers in terms of their preferred self‐praise strategies and culture‐relevant emojis.

Authenticity and Performance: An Analysis of the Influence of Strong and Weak Relationships on Users' Self-Presentation in Social Media

The rise of online social media has led to a shift in peoples social interactions from offline to online platforms. Online social interaction has become an integral part of societal interactions. Platforms like WeChat Moments and Tik Tok offer distinctive social channels, providing a platform with a more diverse audience. As a result, individuals can present their performances to audiences with different levels of relationship strength. This paper aims to explore the differences in self-presentation motivations and strategies when facing audiences with different levels of relationship strength on WeChat Moments and Tik Tok. This paper analyzes the impact of relationship strength on self-presentation, exploring the influence of strong and weak relationships on college students self-presentation in social media. Based on the survey and interview results, the paper compares the differences and connections in self-presentation of college students on WeChat Moments and Tik Tok. The findings indicate that the images users present on social media are closely related to their relationship with the audience. Users adjust their self-presentation strategies based on the composition ratio of strong and weak relationships in the social platform. Furthermore, users perform different degrees of impression management, presenting different levels of authenticity. Users also assign different levels of importance to different audiences and adopt different image correction strategies based on the level of importance. Moreover, in response to the findings of the study, the paper highlights the problems that exist in social media interaction and makes targeted recommendations for the development of online social interaction.

Analysis of academic norms and copyright cognition of scientific and technological journals: Questionnaire survey based on authors and editors

Background: Clarify the connection and difference between academic norms and copyright, to provide a reference for constructing an academic ethics system. Methods: This study designed a questionnaire through expert interviews and adopted a closed-question approach. The questionnaire adopts closed-ended questions, with single-choice questions and multiple-choice questions. Publish questionnaires on the Questionnaire Star platform and disseminate them through WeChat Moments, WeChat Groups, WeChat Side-text, and QQ. A total of 256 people submitted questionnaires. Results: Among the participants, 128 (50%) were editors, 89 (34.77%) were teaching and research posts, and 39 (15.23%) were graduate students. Most of the interviewees are not clear about the concept of academic norms and copyright, especially the senior teaching and research workers. However, most of the interviewees can sensitively detect that the case has academic misconduct, but it is not clear whether the case of academic misconduct violates academic norms or copyright. Conclusions: Editors of scientific and technological journals should particularly grasp the concepts of both, accurately grasp academic norms when reviewing manuscripts, propose reasons for using or not using manuscripts, build a defense line for purifying the academic environment, and provide better publishing platforms and management services for researchers.

When Epidemic Outbreaks Meet Social Media: Collective Illness Narratives on WeChat During COVID-19 Omicron Infection in China

ABSTRACT This study investigates the landscape of collective illness narratives on social media in China during December 2022 and January 2023, when nearly one billion people were infected with the COVID-19 Omicron virus. By analyzing 655 private social media posts, conducting in-depth interviews with 50 individuals, and organizing 6 focus group discussions with 24 participants, this study explores how COVID-19 Omicron infection became normalized and widely discussed on private social media platforms, notably WeChat Moments. This study unveils distinct features that arise when illness narratives and social media intersect and reveals how people exercised moral imagination and depathologized perception in social media illness narratives. The article provides narrative dynamics during the pandemic in a collective manner and sheds light on the reshaping of illness narratives in the era of social media, offering insights for future pandemic responses.

The effect of social media environments on online emotional disclosure: tie strength, network size and self-reference

PurposeMotivating users to self-disclose online is significant to the long-term development of social media. Therefore, research on emotional disclosure, a significant form of self-disclosure, is required. By developing a stimulus-organism-response model, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms by which the social media environment affects users' online emotional disclosure.Design/methodology/approachThis paper proposes two dimensions of social media environments, the online interpersonal environment (tie strength and network size) and the online information environment (self-reference). They are hypothesized to stimulate users' internal psychological needs (image management and emotional expression) which in turn will influence their emotional disclosure intentions. Using data from 489 users of WeChat Moments, the authors conduct partial least squares analysis to validate the research model.FindingsThe findings show that users' intrinsic psychological needs are stimulated by social media environments, but network size is not correlated with the need for emotional expression. The user's need for emotional expression promotes both positive and negative emotional disclosure intentions. The need for image management has a positive impact on positive emotion disclosure intentions but has a negative impact on negative emotion disclosure intentions.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the understanding of online emotional disclosure. It can also help social media managers create efficient plans to encourage users to create content.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2022-0245.

Will people travel because of envy? The influence of travel experience sharing on the post-90s WeChat users

ABSTRACT Many people share travel experience on WeChat Moments (WM). At present, most scholars have analysed the phenomenon from the perspective of destination image construction, but few of them investigate the uniqueness of the WM platform and the social factors of WM are rarely discussed. Based on the social comparison theory, this paper regards the sharing of travel experience on WM as an inducing factor of upward social comparison in WM, and explores its influence on travel intention. The role of benign envy and potential tourists’ self-presentation in this mechanism are also explored. Through experimental design and survey instruments, it is found that high-quality travel experience sharing on WM may increase potential tourists’ travel intention. In addition, high-quality travel experience sharing can induce benign envy, which will increase potential tourists’ travel intention as well. When the level of potential tourists’ self-presentation is high, the relationship between WM travel experience sharing and benign envy is stronger. The results provide theoretical insights into travel experience sharing. Practically, the potential tourists’ benign envy and self-presentation intention can be used to benefit tourism destination marketing.

Designing and sharing travelogues on Chinese WeChat Moments: a social semiotic analysis of Nine Picture Limit

Sharing travel experiences through words, pictures and videos on social media has become a popular activity and means of presenting the self. In China, WeChat is the most widely used social media platform. It offers the Moments (朋友圈pinyin: péng yǒu quān, literally ‘Circle of Friends’) feature which provides a tool for users to post photos, short videos and accompanying texts. This study investigates how digital travelogues are technologically afforded and multimodally constructed on WeChat while exploring users’ self-presentation in their travelogues as presented on Moments. To this end, a total of 115 WeChat Moments screenshots are examined. Drawing on multimodal discourse analysis, this study examines these travelogues’ multimodal design, how social life is presented in them and how users display their identity. Specifically, the authors examine how the practice of the Nine Picture Limit (九宫格, pinyin: jiǔ gōng gé) of WeChat Moments is multimodally constructive for producing travelogues. They found that the multimodal strategies adopted in the Nine Picture Limit are not only a matter of designed aesthetics or style for narrating travel experiences, but also a purposeful process of working with images for self-presentation in the spatial narrative. Furthermore, the possibilities that a digital travelogue is viewed as a creative narrative genre in Moments is addressed. Finally, related exploratory research interests such as digital identities, authenticity of travel and mobility are also discussed.

The characteristics and risk factors of e-cigarette use among adolescents in Shanghai: A case-control study.

This study was conducted to explore the characteristics and risk factors of e-cigarette use in adolescents, aiming for tobacco control and reducing e-cigarette use in this population. Using 1:1 matching, 88 students from three vocational high schools in Shanghai were recruited to conduct a case (using e-cigarettes) - control (not using e-cigarettes) study. Group interviews and questionnaire surveys were used for this qualitative and quantitative mixed-methods study. The keywords were extracted from the interview data and analyzed by the Colaizzi seven-step method. The characteristics of adolescents' use of e-cigarettes include young age at first use, consumption of a large amount, as well as smoking in discrete locations in order to hide from adults. The reasons for using e-cigarettes include curiosity and wanting to replace traditional cigarettes. The risk factors of using e-cigarettes include insufficient understanding of the harm of e-cigarettes at the individual level (The positive outcome expectancy points: Z= -3.746, p<0.001; The negative outcome expectancy points: Z= -3.882, p<0.001), peer influence at the interpersonal level (χ2=6.510, p<0.01), and the influence of social and environmental factors such as e-cigarette sales in the stores and WeChat Moments (p<0.05 for all associations). Having friends who use e-cigarettes, curiosity and sales exposure about e-cigarettes are important factors affecting the use of e-cigarettes by adolescents. It is necessary to strengthen the publicity of the potential hazards of e-cigarettes and to reduce overall usage by improving relevant laws and regulations.

Use and Acceptance of Smart Elderly Care Apps Among Chinese Medical Staff and Older Individuals: Web-Based Hybrid Survey Study.

With the advent of China's aging population and the popularization of smartphones, there is a huge demand for smart elderly care apps. Along with older adults and their dependents, medical staff also need to use a health management platform to manage the health of patients. However, the development of health apps and the large and growing app market pose a problem of declining quality; in fact, important differences can be observed between apps, and patients currently do not have adequate information and formal evidence to discriminate among them. The aim of this study was to investigate the cognition and usage status of smart elderly care apps among older individuals and medical staff in China. From March 1, 2022, to March 30, 2022, we used the web survey tool Sojump to conduct snowball sampling through WeChat. The survey links were initially sent to communities in 23 representative major cities in China. We asked the medical staff of community clinics to post the survey link on their WeChat Moments. From April 1 to May 10, 2022, we contacted those who selected "Have used a smart elderly care app" in the questionnaire through WeChat for a request to participate in semistructured interviews. Participants provided informed consent in advance and interviews were scheduled. After the interviews, the audio recordings were transcribed into text and the emerging themes were analyzed and summarized. A total of 810 individuals participated in this study, 54.8% (n=444) of whom were medical staff, 33.1% (n=268) were older people, and the remaining participants were certified nursing assistants (CNAs) and community workers. Overall, 60.5% (490/810) of the participants had used a smart elderly care app on their smartphone. Among the 444 medical staff who participated in the study, the vast majority (n=313, 70.5%) had never used a smart elderly care app, although 34.7% of them recommended elderly care-related apps to patients. Among the 542 medical staff, CNAs, and community workers that completed the questionnaire, only 68 (12.6%) had used a smart elderly care app. We further interviewed 23 people about their feelings and opinions about smart elderly care apps. Three themes emerged with eight subthemes, including functional design, operation interface, and data security. In this survey, there was a huge difference in the usage rate and demand for smart elderly care apps by the participants. Respondents are mainly concerned with app function settings, interface simplicity, and data security.