Response of Social Media Accounts of Chinese Academic Journals in Humanities and Social Sciences in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This paper aims to introduce the operation of the official account of WeChat, the most popular social media APP in China during the past COVID-19 pandemic. The operation, experience and issues may have implications for academic journals of other countries to run and improve social media tools. Based on the Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) (2021-2022 version) journals of China, samples were selected that WeChat official accounts in the above academic journals for investigation. Then, the operation of the WeChat official account of a typical academic journal during the epidemic period was analyzed by using the network research method. It is found that the WeChat official account of the academic journal responded quickly to the epidemic. Firstly, it actively opened the epidemic column to strengthen agenda-setting. Secondly, it accelerated the pace of publication through cloud publishing. Thirdly, it paid attention to academic popularization to improve readability. Fourthly, it focused on user interaction to enhance relationships between the academic journal and its users. Finally, it strictly handled academic issues to provide reliable information sources. WeChat official accounts promoted the influence of humanities and social sciences academic journals and enhance their transmission capacity during the epidemic. Meanwhile, it’s also hoped that the operating experience of the WeChat official account of Chinese academic journals under the epidemic will be beneficial to the academic information communication services of social media in other countries around the world.