Microblogs: The Third Favorite Online News Source in China

Microblogs like Sina Weibo are the third favorite online news source in China, according to a research report released by the Communication University of China in Beijing. The research revealed that breaking news such as official corruption and scandals drew a lot of traction on microblog in 2010.

The difficulty to filter information on microblog gave users more freedom to express themselves. It also made chatting via microblogs more interesting as sensitive talking points tend to erupt and lead on to deeper discussions.

For example, users learned about first hand news on sensitive topic such as the recent Egypt incident through microblogs. I remembered that discussions on Sina Weibo could go on to several hundreds of comments in a single update. However, the freedom was short-lived as the Chinese authorities were quick to censor all Egypt related updates from users.

The ease of usage and consumption has also made microblogs one of the favorite online news resources. Some interesting findings from the research as follow:

• 70% of the hot topics are related to improper behavior or remarks by government officials
• 630 government departments have microblog accounts
• 73.3% of the government accounts belonged to public security agencies, 5.9% for tourism authorities and 1.4% for transport authorities (the rest of the pie chart aren’t revealed)

It is a pity that Sina didn’t report which are the top two online news sources in China and I couldn’t find the report at the University site. Nonetheless, the report still gives us some interesting insights on microblogs in China.

Truthfully speaking, the research finding didn’t come as a surprise. Microblogs, in its nature, are good news sources, especially when in real-time. On Twitter, I follow tweets from news site, blogs and people. On Sina Weibo, I simply logged on to its news portal to learn what happened in China at the end of the day (Twitter should have that).

Trending topics on microblogs are created by “crowd-sourced voices” of users and usually give us the hottest news buzzing within the community. After all, microblog is the first platform where words are traceable and aggregated to track trending topics.

But that’s a one sided opinion on how a microblog could be used. There are multiple ways people are using microblogs and we would love to hear from you. Do you learn news through microblogs? Feel free to share with us how microblogs have helped you so far.