Humour reactions in crisis: A proximal analysis of Chinese posts on sina weibo in reaction to the salt panic of March 2011

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of humour use in Sina Weibo in reaction to the Chinese salt panic, which occurred as a result of the Fukushima disaster in March 2011. Basing the investigation on the humour Proximal Distancing Theory (PDT), and utilising a dataset from Sina Weibo in 2011, an examination of humour reactions is performed to identify the proximal spread of humourous Weibo posts in relation to the consequent salt panic in China. As a result of this method, we present a novel methodology for understanding humour reactions in social media, and provide recommendations on how such a method could be applied to a variety of other social media, crises, cultural and spatial settings.