Chinese governments have been actively employing the Internet technology to facilitate its propaganda work. Micro-blogging or Weibo of government publicity departments is one such example, which disseminates local official information authoritatively. However, while some of the publicity Weibo have actively gained much influence, others have been rather dormant. To explain this difference, we take the publicity Weibo of Shanghai and Tianjin as examples, and compare them in details. We find that, though sharing similar administrative and economic backgrounds, publicity Weibo of Shanghai garners more information from other governmental departments and public organizations, and responds more rapidly to local emergencies. Moreover, we argue the quality of publicity Weibo largely depends on the local government’s attitude towards government Weibo’s importance in political communication and public administration, and its management concept of government Weibo. Local emergencies may also speed up the development of government Weibo.
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