Chinese Social Media (Weibo) as a Tool to Advance Participatory Management During the Pandemic Period

Abstract

Holistic cultural heritage management is one of the most important components of sustainable urban development strategy, especially in the rapid urbanization context. In line with it, social media have been carried out as an effective tool to enhance community engagement in the decision-making process of the urban heritage renewal project. However, researches on how social media could support people-centered heritage management and evaluate based on the collected data are still limited. Taking Lijiang, Pingyao, Suzhou, Macau, and Kulangsu as case studies, this article proposes an assessment framework to analyze the users' posts' information, such as geo-location, texts, and photos on Weibo. Besides, it offers an insight into the context of the COVID-19 pandemic period. This research further explored the form of the online community aiming to reveal the current state of online participatory practices in China. As shown in the result session, the participatory degree, to a great extent, remains in the informing and consulting levels. The article concludes that the public participation in the inclusive heritage management process is still at a nascent level. More digital tools should be encouraged to apply to the cultural heritage management field.