Public Discourse in the Age of Microblogging: A Content Analysis of Tweets on Sina Weibo Before the Hangzhou G20 Summit

Public discussion of public affairs is one of the most essential foundations for participatory democracy. The advance of information technology facilitates public discussion in cyberspace. It is now popular for people to discuss public affairs in the blogosphere. While user behaviour and information diffusion in microblogging social networks have garnered extensive academic attention, only few studies have been dedicated to investigating the contents of tweets in response to a certain event. The current study aims to fill this gap using content analysis to examine the content of tweets on Sina Weibo regarding the G20 Summit held in Hangzhou in 2016. Some observations are made from the content of Weibo tweets. For example, NGOs and private enterprises were supportive of the event. On the other hand, the general public had more concerns about liveability issues. The findings suggest that public discussion in the blogosphere over a certain issue or topic can entail behavioural and attitudinal changes which are essential for participatory democracy. The Chinese government should take advantage of microblogging to collect views from the community for more informed decision making for policy design and project implementation.