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This study aimed to uncover the characteristics of both misinformation and refutations as well as the associations between different aspects of misinformation and corresponding ways of rebutting it.

Leveraging Hovland's persuasion theory as a research lens and taking data from two Chinese refutation platforms, we characterized the topics of COVID-19-related misinformation and refutations, misinformation communicator, persuasion strategies of misinformation, refutation communicators and refutation strategies based on content analysis. Then, logistic regressions were undertaken to examine how the characteristics of misinformation and refutation strategies interacted.

The investigation into the association between misinformation and refutations found that distinct refutation strategies are favored when debunking particular types of misinformation and by various kinds of refutation communicators. In addition, several patterns of persuasion strategies were identified.

This study had theoretical and practical implications. It emphasized how misinformation and refutations interacted from the perspective of Hovland's persuasion theory, extending the scope of the existing literature and expanding the classical theory to a new research scenario. In addition, several patterns of persuasion strategies used in misinformation and refutation were detected, which may contribute to the refutation practice and help people become immune to misinformation.

This research is among the first to analyze the relationships between misinformation and refutation strategies. Second, we investigated the persuasion strategies of misinformation and refutations, contributing to the concerning literature. Third, elaborating on Hovland’s persuasion theory, this study proposed a comprehensive framework for analyzing the misinformation and refutations in China during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aims to address the growing importance of online health information (OHI) and the associated uncertainty. Although previous research has explored factors influencing the credibility of OHI, results have been inconsistent. Therefore, this study aims to identify the essential factors that influence the perceived credibility of OHI by conducting a meta-analysis of articles published from 2010 to 2022. The study also aims to examine the moderating effects of demographic characteristics, study design and the platforms where health information is located.

Based on the Prominence-Interpretation Theory (PIT), a meta-analysis of 25 empirical studies was conducted to explore 12 factors related to information content and source, social interaction, individual and media affordance. Moderators such as age, education level, gender of participants, sample size, platforms and research design were also examined.

Results suggest that all factors, except social support, have significant effects on the credibility of OHI. Among them, argument quality had the strongest correlation with credibility and individual factors were also found to be relevant. Moderating effects indicate that social support was significantly moderated by age and education level. Different sample sizes may lead to variations in the role of social endorsement, while personal involvement was moderated by sample size, platform and study design.

This study enriches the application of PIT in the health domain and provides guidance for scholars to expand the scope of research on factors influencing OHI credibility.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the subjects contained in the Dunhuang mural images as well as their relation structures.

This paper performed content analysis based on Panofsky’s theory and 237 research papers related to the Dunhuang mural images. UNICET software was also used to study the correlation structures of subject network.

The results show that the three levels of subject have all captured the attention of Dunhuang mural researchers, the iconology occupy the critical position in the whole image study, and the correlation between iconography and iconology was strong. Further analysis reveals that cultural development, production, and power and domination have high centralities in the subject network.

The research samples come from three major Chinese journal databases. However, there are still many authoritative monographs and foreign publications about the Dunhuang murals which are not included in this study.

The results uncover the subject hierarchies and structures contained in the Dunhuang murals from the angle of image scholarship which express scholars’ intention and contribute to the deep semantic annotation on digital Dunhuang mural images.

To meet the emerging demand for fine-grained annotation and semantic enrichment of cultural heritage images, this paper proposes a new approach that can transcend the boundary of information organization theory and Panofsky's iconography theory.

After a systematic review of semantic data models for organizing cultural heritage images and a comparative analysis of the concept and characteristics of deep semantic annotation (DSA) and indexing, an integrated DSA framework for cultural heritage images as well as its principles and process was designed. Two experiments were conducted on two mural images from the Mogao Caves to evaluate the DSA framework's validity based on four criteria: depth, breadth, granularity and relation.

Results showed the proposed DSA framework included not only image metadata but also represented the storyline contained in the images by integrating domain terminology, ontology, thesaurus, taxonomy and natural language description into a multilevel structure.

DSA can reveal the aboutness, ofness and isness information contained within images, which can thus meet the demand for semantic enrichment and retrieval of cultural heritage images at a fine-grained level. This method can also help contribute to building a novel infrastructure for the increasing scholarship of digital humanities.

Sharing and disseminating debunking information are critical to correcting rumours and controlling disease when dealing with public health crises. This study investigates the factors that influence social media users' debunking information sharing behaviour from the perspective of persuasion. The authors examined the effects of argument adequacy, emotional polarity, and debunker's identity on debunking information sharing behaviour and investigated the moderating effects of rumour content and target.

The model was tested using 150 COVID-19-related rumours and 2,349 original debunking posts on Sina Weibo.

First, debunking information that contains adequate arguments is more likely to be reposted only when the uncertainty of the rumour content is high. Second, using neutral sentiment as a reference, debunking information containing negative sentiment is shared more often regardless of whether the government is the rumour target, and information containing positive sentiment is more likely to be shared only when the rumour target is the government. Finally, debunking information published by government-type accounts is reposted more often and is enhanced when the rumour target is the government.

The study provides a systematic framework for analysing the behaviour of sharing debunking information among social media users. Specifically, it expands the understanding of the factors that influence debunking information sharing behaviour by examining the effects of persuasive cues on debunking information sharing behaviour and the heterogeneity of these effects across various rumour contexts.