Cute Communication: Can Cute Discourse Be Used in Risk Communication?

The development of social media has brought new challenges to government risk communication, and the public has put forward higher requirements for emotionality, novelty, and interactivity in communicating risk information. Based on this, the Chinese emergency government has adopted a new expression on social media platforms—cute discourse. The emergency government’s use of cute discourse to mitigate negative public emotions and enhance information attraction. Although there is a large number of studies on government risk communication on social media, there is a lack of research on the effectiveness of using this new expression. In this study, we analyzed the 11,152 emergency government’s posts on Weibo in China and assessed the impact of the use of cute discourse on risk communication effect under a mixed research method. The results show that within the range of sample values, the use and degree of the emergency government’s cute discourse improves communication effectiveness. Additionally, the driving effect of the use and degree of the emergency government’s cute discourse on risk communication varied across crisis types, risk stages, and risk themes. These results provide novel approaches and new perspectives for the study of governmental risk communication discourse.