Temporal Accommodation in Government-public Interactions on Chinese Government Weibo in Emergency Context

Chinese Government Weibo enables civic engagement and political participation, and arouses unprecedented communication conflict between government and public. This study intends to investigate communication strategies employed in emergency management on government Weibo under the guidance of Communication Accommodation Theory, according to which interactants employ convergence, divergence or maintenance strategy to negotiate social distance through modifying the communication moves. This research presents and analyzes a case of Shanghai government Weibo account @Shanghaiditieshmetro on examining communication processes empirically in terms of temporal cues. The findings imply that the government shall adapt itself to the e-government era and give continual attention to the online public voices, according to which tune its behaviors to get a win-win result.