Publications
Publication details [#63165]
Tian, Dexin and Chin-Chung Chao. 2017. Making Sense of the Online Forum Posts of Two Books on Zheng He’s Voyages. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 46 (3) : 191–209.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Routledge
Annotation
This article explores the online forum posts at the websites of Amazon and Goodreads of two books on Zheng He’s voyages. The findings are threefold: First, most of the online forum participants play their due roles and satisfy the six conditions of Dahlberg’s model of an ideal online public sphere. Second, the emerged themes match the six conditions of Dahlberg’s model. The readers’ reviews at the two Western social media websites are mainly positive and rational. Implications of the study are also debated.