china-twitter2

Tables

Table 1: Dataset

Data collection
Date range	Nov 1, 2019 - Apr 30, 2022
Days collected	912
Handles collected	81
Diplomacy	68
Media	13
Datasets	Number of cases
1. Total original tweets and retweets collected (network analysis)	723439
1a. Diplomacy original tweets	109265
1b. Diplomacy retweets	80876
1c. Media original tweets	489354
1d. Media retweets	43944
2. Subsample of original tweets in English (topic analysis)	485297
2a. Diplomacy	66987
2.b Media	418310
3. Coded sample of diplomacy original tweets in English (discourse analysis)	XXXXX

Table 2: Diplomacy

User	Description	Original tweets	Original tweets in English	Retweets	Retweets in English	Total
AmbCina	Embassy of the P.R.C. in Rome, Italy	3855	6	214	159	4069
AmbCuiTiankai	CUI Tiankai, former Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. (2013-2021)	301	287	32	31	333
AmbKongXuanyou	KONG Xuanyou, Chinese Ambassador to Japan (2019-2023)	28	0	1	0	29
AmbLiJunhua	LI Junhua, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of China to Italy and San Marino (2019-2022)	283	272	11	10	294
AmbLiuXiaoMing	LIU Xiaoming, Chinese Ambassador to the U.K. (2010-2021)	6070	5307	13	13	6083
AmbQinGang	QIN Gang, Chinese ambassador to the US (2021-2023)	488	446	17	17	505
AmbZhengZeguang	ZHENG Zeguang Chinese Ambassador to the UK (2021-)	747	706	10	9	757
Amb_ChenXu	CHEN Xu, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the P.R.C. to the U.N. office in Geneva, Switzerland (2019-)	591	580	60	57	651
AmbassadeChine	Embassy of the P.R.C. in Paris, France	8903	257	2748	719	11651
CCGBelfast	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Belfast, U.K.	228	221	321	292	549
CGHuangPingNY	HUANG Ping, Chinese Consul General in New York (2018-)	332	332	32	32	364
CGMeifangZhang	ZHANG Meifang, Consul General of China in Belfast (2022-)	6298	5553	6684	5612	12982
CGZhangPingLA	ZHANG Ping, Consul General of the People's Republic of China in Los Angeles (2017-2022)	222	220	21	21	243
CHN_UN_NY	Spokesperson of Mission of the P.R.C. to the U.N.	533	492	2602	2442	3135
Cao_Li_CHN	Cao Li, Counsellor, Information Department, MFA, China (2021-)	583	522	355	320	938
ChinaAmbUN	ZHANG Jun, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the P.R.C. to the U.N. (2019-)	1384	1203	830	772	2214
ChinaCGCalgary	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Calgary, Canada	2461	2413	19	19	2480
ChinaCGMTL	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Montreal, Canada	1419	521	282	155	1701
ChinaCG_Ffm	Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Frankfurt am Main	151	30	73	34	224
ChinaCG_HH	Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Hamburg	653	34	479	152	1132
ChinaCG_Muc	Chinese Consulate General in Munich	372	16	232	129	604
ChinaCG_NYC	Consulate General of the PRC in New York	631	623	275	275	906
ChinaConSydney	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Sydney, Australia	4642	4619	468	454	5110
ChinaConsulate	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Chicago, U.S.	1348	1300	123	122	1471
ChinaEUMission	Mission of the P.R.C. to the E.U.	3776	3250	623	576	4399
ChinaEmbEsp	Chinese Embassy in Spain	4473	2	272	51	4745
ChinaEmbGermany	Embassy of the P.R.C. in Berlin, Germany	2303	72	752	555	3055
ChinaEmbOttawa	Embassy of the P.R.C. in Ottawa, Canada	1767	1684	907	896	2674
ChinaInDenmark	Embassy of the P.R.C. in Copenhagen, Denmark	1046	1010	481	466	1527
ChinaMissionGva	Mission of the P.R.C. to the U.N. office in Geneva, Switzerland	2096	1939	3187	3093	5283
ChinaMissionVie	Mission of the P.R.C. to the U.N. office in Vienna, Austria	1478	1474	213	207	1691
China_Lyon	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Lyon, France	50	3	802	121	852
China_Ukraine_	Chinese Embassy in Ukraine	152	5	30	26	182
ChinainVan	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Vancouver, Canada	418	409	355	345	773
Chinamission2un	Mission of the P.R.C. to the U.N.	2991	2826	2706	2568	5697
ChineseCon_Mel	Chinese Consulate-General in Melbourne	500	492	35	35	535
ChineseEmbinRus	Chinese Embassy in Russia	861	24	25	20	886
ChineseEmbinUK	Embassy of the P.R.C. in London, U.K.	3400	3025	233	232	3633
ChineseEmbinUS	Embassy of the P.R.C. in Washington, D.C., U.S.	1347	1262	648	630	1995
ChnConsul_osaka	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Osaka, Japan	1964	12	1543	112	3507
ChnConsulateFuk	Consulate-General of the P. R. C. in Fukuoka	710	6	972	26	1682
ChnConsulateNag	Consulate-General of the P. R. C. in Nagasaki	651	0	154	20	805
ChnConsulateNgo	Consulate-General of the P. R. C. in Nagoya	550	0	699	43	1249
ChnConsulateNgt	Consulate-General of the P. R. C. in Niigata	329	0	60	7	389
ChnEmbassy_jp	Embassy of the P.R.C. in Tokyo, Japan	2614	18	1319	349	3933
ChnMission	LIU Yuyin, Spokesperson, Permanent Representative of the P.R.C. to the U.N. office in Geneva, Switzerland (2019-)	121	91	1033	969	1154
ConsulChinaBcn	Consulate General of China in Barcelona	1166	15	121	38	1287
ConsulateSan	Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco	105	64	2750	2737	2855
DIOC_MFA_China	Department of International Organizations and Conferences, MFA, China	179	173	5	5	184
FuCong17	Fu Cong, Chinese Ambassador to the EU (2022-)	156	152	359	351	515
FukLyuGuijun	Consul General of the P. R. C. in Fukuoka (2020-)	65	0	63	1	128
GeneralkonsulDu	DU Xiaohui, Consul General, Consulate General of the P.R.C. to Hamburg, Germany	291	23	325	102	616
Li_Yang_China	Li Yang, Counsellor of Department of Information, MFA, China. (2021-)	1211	984	178	139	1389
MFA_China	Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Beijing, P.R.C.	3265	3122	2628	1999	5893
SpokespersonCHN	HUA Chunying, Spokesperson & Director General, Information Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Beijing, P.R.C. (2019-2021). Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs (2021-).	6077	5599	376	339	6453
SpokespersonHZM	HU Zhaoming, Spokesperson & Director General, Bureau of Public Information and Communication, International Department, CPC Central Committee (2019-)	382	361	40	40	422
SpoxCHNinUS	Liu Pengyu, Spokesperson of Chinese Embassy in the U.S. (2021-)	828	801	259	248	1087
WangLutongMFA	Wang Lutong, Director General for European Affairs, MFA, China (2019-)	90	84	0	0	90
WuPeng_MFAChina	Wu Peng, Director-General, Department of African Affairs, MFA, China (2020-)	1994	1974	0	0	1994
XIEYongjun_CHN	Xie Yongjun, Head of Division, Info Dept, MFA, China	1540	1018	72	66	1612
Zhou_Li_CHN	Zhou Li, Counsellor, Information Department of Foreign Ministry, China (2002-)	617	581	236	222	853
chinacgedi	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Edinburgh, U.K.	304	290	248	240	552
chinascio	State Council Information Office of the P.R.C.	4353	4335	155	152	4508
consulat_de	Consulate General of the P.R.C. in Strasbourg, France	989	18	2695	1189	3684
xuejianosaka	Xue Jian, Consul General of P.R.C in Osaka (2021-)	3645	2	22745	3795	26390
zhaobaogang2011	Zhao Baogang, African Affairs Department of Chinese Foreign Ministry (2021-2023)	460	420	887	849	1347
zhu_jingyang	Zhu Jingyang, Consul General of P.R.C in Barcelona (2021-)	1969	50	257	87	2226
zlj517	ZHAO Lijian, Spokesperson & Deputy Director General, Information Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Beijing, P.R.C. (2019-2023). Deputy Director-General of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs of China (2023-).	3459	3357	13526	12551	16985

Table 3: Media

User	Description	Original tweets	Original tweets in English	Retweets	Retweets in English	Total
CGTNOfficial	China Global Television Network (CGTN)	101591	99765	16526	16458	118117
CNS1952	China News Service	36706	0	5	0	36711
ChinaDaily	China Daily	64846	64410	2435	2355	67281
Echinanews		31418	31284	26	25	31444
HuXijin_GT	HU Xijin, Global Times Editor-in-chief	1528	1524	49	49	1577
PDChina	People's Daily	32467	32391	158	158	32625
PDChinese	People's Daily (Chinese)	26142	1	0	0	26142
QiushiJournal	Qiushi Journal	1131	1095	0	0	1131
XHNews	Xinhua News	75318	74990	37	37	75355
XinWen_Ch	Voice of China	3324	141	316	26	3640
chenweihua	CHEN Weihua, China Daily E.U. Bureau Chief and columnist	17593	16607	23045	22296	40638
globaltimesnews	Global Times	87304	86805	684	619	87988
shen_shiwei	SHEN Shiwei, CGTN News Producer	9986	9297	663	633	10649

Figures

Network analysis

Network visualisation of Chinese diplomats and media outlets on Twitter in the early period (Nov 2019 - Apr 2020). Node size shows the in-degree of the node.

Figure 1a

Visualisation of the early period, where nodesize indicates the in-degree of the node.

Figure 1b

Visualisation of the early period, where nodesize indicates the out-degree of the node.

Figure 1c

Network visualisation of Chinese diplomats and media outlets on Twitter in the late period (Nov 2021 - Apr 2022). Node size shows the in-degree of the node.

Figure 1d

Visualisation of the late period, where nodesize indicates the out-degree of the node.

Topic model

Figure 2

Interactive plot of topics. Open here.

Figure 3a

Figure 3b

Figure 3c

Figure 3d

Media use

Figure 4

Number of tweets with and without media (photos and videos) over time.

Figure 5

Retweets over time for tweets with and without media (photos and videos). Each tweet is represented by a blue line, where the height of the line corresponds to the number of retweets on the log scale. Each tweet is plotted with a semi-transparent line to show the density of the data, i.e. the darker the area, the more tweets.

Sentiment analysis

Normalised emotion distribution over time for chinese diplomats original tweets

Information dynamics of the emotion distribution over time for chinese diplomats original tweets. Background color represents shifts in variance.

Topic analysis

A topic model was created using the diplomat tweets. Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling using gensim package in Python (See documentation: https://radimrehurek.com/gensim_3.8.3/models/ldamodel.html). LDA is a hierarchical Bayesian model with three levels, in which each item of a collection, in this case tweets, is modeled as a finite mixture over an underlying set of topics. In turn, each topic is modeled as an infinite mixture over an underlying set of topic probabilities. An explicit representation of each tweet is provided by the topic probabilities.

A total of 180 models were trained for both diplomat and media tweets in each time period with a variation of the following three hyperparameters:

• Number of Topics (K)
  • The topic model was trained requesting 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 latent topics
• Dirichlet hyperparameter alpha: A-priori document-topic density
  • The topic model was trained using 6 different a-priori beliefs about the document-topic density, including 0.01, 0.31, 0.61, 0.91, symmetric and asymmetric
• Dirichlet hyperparameter beta: A-priori word-topic density
  • The topic model was trained using 5 different a-priori beliefs about the word-topic density, including 0.01, 0.31, 0.61, 0.91 and symmetric

The model with the best coherence score is chosen for analysis.

Network analysis

Network analysis performed using the networkx package in python (https://networkx.org/) and the network visualizations are generated from the file network_main.py (see usage below). Nodes in the networks are Twitter handles, and edges (connections) are weighted by the number of mentions between the Twitter handles that are displayed. The network visualizations only plot Twitter handles that are either flagged as (i) Chinese diplomats or (ii) Chinese media outlets. The edgewidth (strength of connections) is determined by the number of mentions between Twitter handles of Chinese diplomats and media outlets (see below). The nodesize (size of handle) is determined by various attributes, such as:

• total mentions: number of total mentions to the Twitter handle in question from all users (also non-diplomats and non-media that are not shown as nodes in the plot). This shows how "popular" the Chinese diplomats and media outlets are on Twitter broadly, rather than just their popularity/activity within the diplomat/media sub-network.
• weighted degree: node-size scaled by number of total number of connections between Twitter handle in question and other Chinese diplomats and media outlets (both directions counted, and each mention counted). The weighted degree plot corresponds to in-degree + out-degree (i.e. we count both directions).
• in-degree: number of mentions from other Chinese diplomats and media outlets to the Twitter handle in question (only one direction counted).
• out-degree: number of mentions from the Twitter handle in question to other Chinese diplomats and media outlets (only one direction counted).

In addition to the network visualizations, we also show the top 10 handles (based on weighted degree).

Emotion analysis

Emotion classification was conducted using a DistilBERT model finetuned for emotion classification. The finetuned model can be found on HuggingFace. The NewsFluxus package was used to investigate the information dynamics of the emotion distribution over time.

Use of photos and videos

To investigate the dynamics of the diplomats' use of photos and videos (media), measures such as the count and proportion of tweets with media, as well as the number of retweets were plotted over time. See the media_use directory for plots and scripts.