The Adjustment of Pressure Perception in E-Government Response: A Perspective of the Political System Theory

Abstract

Pressures sensed by the political system may lead to output failure, which can damage the effectiveness of government response but have rarely been analyzed in the literature of Chinese Internet studies. This research asks the following question: Why does the political system produce output failure in the online response process, in which the topic of government response does not align with the topic of the corresponding public message? Which factors can influence the possibility that the political system will produce an unmatched response? Engaging with the political system theory, we used topic modeling and sentiment analysis to analyze the online response data. The paper argues that the application of technology in government response adjusts the sensitivity of the political system to pressures. Factors including topic, emotion, and time can generate pressure on the political system. However, the political system is unable to detect a significant volume of stress, with digital technology expanding channel capacity.

Keywords

• government response
• digital government
• topic modeling
• state–society relationship