Etapa 4 Transporte

In most cases, previous studies on the comparison between Twitter and Weibo tend to follow a quantitative research approach (e.g., Ma et al., 2016; Yu et al., 2017; Huang et al., 2017) to calculate the distribution, coverage or frequency of certain topics discussed on the two platforms. However, this method bypasses the substantial content of posts, which should be regarded as a direct element which distinguishe one social media platform from another. In addition, the content of posts provides a means to reflect on the role of social media to understand how public opinion is generated in completely different social environments. Therefore, the present research follows a qualitative approach and delves into the details of topic framing to observe how GM-related futures are projected on Twitter and Weibo.

Investigating the thematic distribution of these GM-related futures is a means of mapping out future-related topics discussed on social media from an observable perspective. The outcome of this investigation will help obtain an overall picture of how an alternative GM future is framed by social media users. In general, the future of GM technology is constructed by a variety of dimensions that range from economic concerns to science management issues. There exists a high level of overlap in the data regarding the distribution of thematic frames between Weibo and Twitter, and regarding the ranking of these themes in terms of the frequency of topics being discussed. This information indicates that regardless of the language, social, cultural and political background of participants, people basically have the same concerns about the future implications for GM technology. Yet, the specific subdivided issues of each frame discussed on Twitter and Weibo differ from one another, demonstrating distinct social and cultural features of the two, different language environments. In general, covering diverse GM issues, thematic framing on social media causes people to perceive and conceive an alternative GM-related future, which also affects the direction of public opinion on such a controversial technology. Moreover, the three-fold capacity of anticipatory governance can be clearly identified from spontaneous discussion about

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the prospects of GM on social media, suggesting that social media have the potential to support the anticipatory governance of GM issues.

The following section will engage with the results of qualitative content analysis concerning the framing of different GM-related futures. After qualitatively analysing the patterns of user-generated content on Twitter, a framework constituted of the five hottest themes that produced a high volume of online discussion is refined from a large amount of information from online conversation (824 tweets, a total of 7,563 words). The five thematic frames include: research and scientific issues, governmental management and intervention, attitudes toward GM, safety issues, and implications for the use of GM technology. Considering Weibo, the future-related frames of GM tend to be unequally distributed among five heated themes which show a high similarity to Twitter: research and scientific issues, GM governance, GM labelling policy, public attitudes towards GM and GM safety issues. Referring to nearly fourfold the quantity of the raw data collected from Twitter (2,370 pieces of Weibo content with 30,190 Chinese words) the user-generated content on Weibo covers a wider range of attributes and a more diverse range of propositions raised in discussion than Twitter, discussions which have been embedded with Chinese features.

Section 4.2 then proceeds to interpret conversations on social media in more detail with the assistance of theoretical concepts—the three ingredients of anticipatory governance—to gain an insight to the conceived futures of GM.

4.1.1 Research and Scientific issues

On Weibo and Twitter, the theme 'research and scientific issues' covers a couple of research-related issues, including: the latest, and previous, outcomes of GMO research; the scientific principles and practical application of GMOs; the supportive evidence for the consequence of GM technology, and the issues relating to properties of GM research, such as funding sources and ownership. These conversations occupy the highest

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percentage of eligible content (16% on Weibo, 18% on Twitter), thus research and scientific issues can be ranked in first place in terms of GM-related discussions. With respect to the Chinese context, aside from these conventional issues some topics also discuss the prospects of Chinese agriculture attributed to GM technology, such as a newly invented Chinese App for monitoring the growth of GM crops. Overall, ‘research and scientific issues’ has been regarded as one of the central issues when people discuss alternative futures concerning GM.

4.1.2 Governance and government

Closely following the issue of GM research, the governance and government-related topic gave rise to countless discussions, which made it another must-talked about and controversial theme on social media. Different from the high consistency of GM research issues in Chinese and English, there exists an obvious distinction on Twitter and Weibo. Specifically, Twitter users tend to be more interested in ‘governmental management and intervention’, which encompasses the actions taken by governments, such as policymaking, regulating and supervising. Topics about policymakers, politician and political officials are also included under this label. While in contrast, the same theme on Weibo is named ‘GM governance’ and the focus of discussion diverts from government actions to a series of public governing behaviours targeting GM technology, such as appealing for legislation, improving the policy system, protecting individual’s civil rights and shaping the government’s image, which, of course, covers governmental management and intervention and extends to a broader range of social actions, such as the public intellectual-led anti-GM movement on Weibo.

Discussions about GM governance accounted for 13% of Weibo’s coverage while government behaviours occupied 9% on Twitter, both of which rank second place following ‘GM research issues’. It is also noteworthy that on both social media platforms, disputes over GM labelling policy has been a heated topic and attracted high participation. With respect to the outstandingly high coverage of GM labelling on

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Weibo and Twitter, in this research GM labelling policy will be treated as a very specific and representative issue (see Section 4.2), to reflect how discussants envisaged such a hot and controversial topic on social media.

4.1.3 Attitudes toward GM

Regardless of the environment of language, social media serves as a public forum where people are able to express personal ideas, attitudes and preferences freely (Grubmüller, Götsch and Krieger, 2013: 20). The present data shows that attitudes towards GMOs are widely expressed on Weibo and Twitter, however, with different focuses. Regarding user-spontaneous discussion about possible GM futures on Twitter, the composition of attitudes toward GM within discussions is much more complicated than expected. Generally, rather than being able to simplistically divide the debates into supporting and opposing options, the attitudes can be classified into six specific dimensions, namely support, suspicion, anti-GM, object to anti-GM, trust and unsureness. Participants’ detailed moods, tones, values and beliefs behind their words contributes to the classification. Attitudes conveyed on Weibo show complicated dimensions, and also deviates in terms of the different attributes of GM technology. In other words, Weibo users tend to express attitudes toward certain specific attributes of GM, the management of GM for example, instead of commenting on the issue of GMOs as a whole.

Similar to any other discussion or debate, subjective factors such as personal values, beliefs, and attitudes permeate into and are delivered, either directly or indirectly, in communication with others. Regardless of the purpose of declaring personal attitudes, expressions with clear attitudes has an effect on steering the direction of public opinion on a target topic. GM issues are not an exception, which will be further analysed in Section 4.3 and 4.4. To summarise, occupying 8% of the eligible content on Twitter and 6% on Weibo, attitude-related tweets rank third place amongst the top most popular themes framing the future of GM technology.

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4.1.4 Safety issues

Issues about the safety of GM technology draw extensive attention from the public when people are conceiving what the possible future of GM technology may look like. Regardless of the language context, safety issue of GM technology referred to any possible influence that GM brings with it concerning the safety of individuals, communities, societies and the natural environment. In most cases, the main safety issue of GM concerns forecasts about the implications of GM, either positive or negative. This thematic topic illustrates the capacity of foresight expounded in anticipatory governance, which will be fully discussed and analysed in Section 4.4. As can be seen from the present data, the safety issue of GM technology is a key factor affecting the attitudes of many people towards GM technology, who then tend to be cautious about the prospect of GM technology and believe that people will have to pay for the consequences of misapplying GM technology in the future. Therefore, this conceived association discussants make between safety and attitudes toward GM will be further interpreted (in Section 4.3). Generally, regarding the present data, 5% of the content refers to the safety concerns about GMOs on Twitter and 6% on Weibo, ranking safety issues in fourth place amongst the top most popular themes of discussion.

4.2 GM Labelling: A rational and forward-looking action confronting