A Comparative Study of Users’ Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Qi Gao Web Information Systems Delft University of Technology Delft University of Technology

What we study: microblogging behavior

340,000,000 500,000,000 100,000,000 250,000,000

What are the differences in Chinese and Western users’ microblogging behavior?

Wikipedia:Twitter Wikipedia:Sina_Weibo 2 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Cultural differences

standing up for himself Flickr:semicharmed acting as a member of a group Flickr:webei 3 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Data sources

follower/followee network limited length of a post repost/reply/like use of URLs and hashtags meta information (time, source) 4 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

User modeling and analysis framework syntactic analysis sentiment analysis Cultural Analytics semantic analysis temporal analysis Data Processing and User Profiling

data acquisition multilingual NER metadata extraction semantic enrichment topic/interest modeling user profile construction

Microblogging Platforms Semantic Web

5 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

User profiling

What could go wrong? RT @DRUGE_REPORT Washington: White House seeks ‘Control’ over communication during ‘crisis’ #obama drudge.tw/LVZygj

Profile ?

6 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

User profiling – syntactic characteristics

What could go wrong? RT @DRUGE_REPORT Washington: White House seeks ‘Control’ over communication during ‘crisis’ #obama drudge.tw/LVZygj

# Profile

hashtag/URL 7 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

User profiling – semantic characteristics

What could go wrong? RT @DRUGE_REPORT Washington : White House seeks ‘Control’ over communication during ‘crisis’ # obama drudge.tw/LVZygj

# Profile

hashtag/URL entity 8 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

User profiling – semantic characteristics

What could go wrong? RT @DRUGE_REPORT Washington : White House seeks ‘Control’ over communication during ‘crisis’ # obama drudge.tw/LVZygj topic:person topic:location topic:organization

# T Profile

hashtag/URL entity topic 9 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

User profiling – sentiment characteristics

What could go wrong? RT @DRUGE_REPORT Washington: White House seeks ‘Control’ over communication during ‘crisis’ #obama drudge.tw/LVZygj positive negative neutral

# T Profile

hashtag/URL entity topic sentiment 10 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

User profiling – temporal characteristics

What could go wrong? RT @DRUGE_REPORT Washington: White House seeks ‘Control’ over communication during ‘crisis’ #obama drudge.tw/LVZygj

# T Profile

hashtag/URL entity topic sentiment temporal information 11 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Analysis of users’ microblogging behavior

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Datasets

• Microblog data collected from Sina Weibo and Twitter over a period of three months • • > 46 million micropost overall – 22m from Sina Weibo and 24m from Twitter a sample of 2616 Sina Weibo users and 1200 Twitter users •

Analyze and compare user behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

• on two levels (i) the entire user population and (ii) individual users • from different angles (i) syntactic, (ii) semantic, (iii) sentiment and (iv) temporal analysis • relate our findings to theories about cultural stereotypes (Hofstede’s cultural dimensions) 12 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Cultural model: Hofstede’s cultural dimensions

• Describes stereotypical cultural characteristics of nationalities • Five core dimensions: • Power Distance (PDI) • Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV) • • Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS) Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) • Long-Term Orientation (LTO) • Scores are relative wrt. other nationalities geert-hofstede.com

13 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Syntactic analysis – what are the syntactical characteristics of messages?

Hashtags and URLs are less frequently applied on Sina Weibo than on Twitter.

Users on Twitter are more triggered by hashtags and URLs when propagating information than on Sina Weibo.

14 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Syntactic analysis – what are the syntactical characteristics of messages?

high collectivism (Sina Weibo) Cultural Differences high individualism (Twitter) Hashtags and URLs are less frequently applied on Sina Weibo than on Twitter.

Users on Twitter are more triggered by hashtags and URLs when propagating information than on Sina Weibo.

15 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Semantic analysis – what kind of topics are discussed?

Weibo Twitter

The topics that users discuss on Sina Weibo are to a large extent related to locations and persons. In contrast to Sina Weibo, users on Twitter are talking more about organizations (such as companies, political parties).

16 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Semantic analysis – what kind of topics are discussed?

high collectivism (Sina Weibo) Cultural Differences high individualism (Twitter) The topics that users discuss on Sina Weibo are to a large extent related to locations and persons. In contrast to Sina Weibo, users on Twitter are talking more about organizations (such as companies, political parties).

17 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Sentiment analysis – what are the sentiment characteristics of microposts?

Weibo Twitter

Sina Weibo users have a stronger tendency to publish positive messages than Twitter users.

18 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Combining semantic and sentiment analysis The difference is amplified when discussing ‘people’ or ‘location’, with Sina Weibo users even more positive and Twitter users more negative.

19 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Combining semantic and sentiment analysis long-term orientation (Sina Weibo) Cultural Differences short-tem orientation (Twitter) The difference is amplified when discussing ‘people’ or ‘location’, with Sina Weibo users even more positive and Twitter users more negative.

20 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Temporal analysis – how quickly do users propagate information?

Weibo Twitter

time distance = t

repost

- t

original post

Twitter users repost messages faster than Sina Weibo users.

21 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Temporal analysis – how quickly do users propagate information?

large degree of power distance (Sina Weibo) Cultural Differences low degree of power distance (Twitter) Twitter users repost messages faster than Sina Weibo users.

22 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Qi Gao et al. Information Propagation Cultures on Sina Weibo and Twitter. In Proceedings of ACM Web Science Conference 2012. Evanston, USA.

23 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Conclusion and future work

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What we did

• user modeling framework for culture-aware user modeling based on • microblogging data data-intensive analyses deliver valuable insights for multilingual and culture aware user modeling •

Findings

• key differences between Chinese and US/Western users’ microblogging behavior – e.g. Chinese microblogging activities are more positive and less ‘political’ • some of the differences can be explained with cultural model from social science research – e.g. Hofstede: individualism vs. collectivism •

Future work:

• develop personalized applications that are able to adapt to the cultural factors 24 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter

Thank You!

Q & A

Qi Gao, Fabian Abel, Geert-Jan Houben, Yong Yu [email protected]

@wisdelft 25 Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter