Generating Situational Authority Through Genre of Governance: A Case Study of Chinese Public Sectors’ Crisis Management Strategies

This study investigates how public sector organizations generate authority in social media crisis. Furthermore, it examines how genres of governance, namely genre chain and genre mixing, contribute to the generation of authority. On this basis of an interdisciplinary theoretical framework consisting of the concepts of “network governance” and “authority,” a genre analysis of 100 top forwarded posts on Weibo about a high-profile murder demonstrates the mechanism of authority generation: First, genre chain is used to discursively sustain the institutional structure during the crisis; Second, genre mixing is employed as a way to resonate with the key audiences. These findings illustrate that the authority of public sector organizations in crisis goes beyond the context of fixed institutions, and needs to be considered as a situationally constructed concept, gained through collaborative endeavor within governance network.