Between Engagement and Response

This case study explored the Ice Bucket Challenge campaign on a Chinese local social platform, Sina Weibo. The Ice Bucket Challenge campaign was a global buzz on social media in 2014 and was a philanthropic success. Such a viral marketing campaign with philanthropic purposes rarely occurred in terms of the outstanding use of social media. The popularity of this campaign in China attracted attention to the Chinese specific cultural and social context. Sina Weibo was the social platform where the ice bucket challenge achieved great social engagement. In terms of the Chinese cultural and social specificity, this study focused on the social engagement and response triggering of the Ice Bucket Challenge on Sina Weibo. Two research questions led this case study: One aimed at identifying the key strategies for social engagement performed by the ice bucket challenge viral messages on Sina Weibo. The other aimed at interpreting the related attitudes and behaviors of the engaged Chinese users. This study used the viral message theory and elaboration likelihood model as theoretical foundation. The study applied a sequential mixed qualitative method, including qualitative content analysis on the top 100 engaging viral messages on Sina Weibo and in-depth interviews with 12 Chinese engaged users. A triangulation of the two research questions finally completed this case study. This study summarized the key strategies in the viral messages for social engagement and highlighted the theoretical dimensions including authority, sentiment and informational relevance. Analysis on the influence on related attitudes and behaviors overall indicated a shift from the periphery route to the central route with time going and highlighted the theoretical variables including source credibility, sentiment and information quality. Finally, this study clarified the gap between social engagement and response triggering in the Ice Bucket Challenge campaign on Sina Weibo. The campaign was concluded as a success raising public awareness of the rare disease in China, but a failure to gather proportional donations from the Chinese civil society.