Who Says There's No Twitter In China? Youth Usage Patterns And Attitudes Towards Weibo

Weibo, a 140-character Internet-based communications platform is the current buzzword among Chinese youth. Referred to many as "the Chinese Twitter," the micro-blog and its ability to traverse physical boundaries and time constraints to link a large group of people has deeper implications in China than Twitter did for the Western democratic world, given the Chinese social and political context. This research sets out to examine the micro-blogging phenomenon in China via Sina Weibo, the micro-blogging website run by Sina Corporation, China's largest Internet portal and currently the most leading micro-blogging website with the highest number of registered users in China. The paper will dissect the micro-blogging phenomenon among China netizens using Habermas'theory of the public sphere as a key concept. Data on users'attitudes, motivations and experiences was gathered through individual, semi-structured interviews conducted with ten Shanghai-based Sina Weibo users between the ages of 18-30 in order to evaluate if Habermas'concept is a relevant one when applied to the micro-blogging trend in China's unique social and political context.This study finds that while Sina Weibo definitely provides in appearance a large public space with little entry barriers from people of all backgrounds to participate in debate, the quality of such debate and the inclusiveness of this public space is not, in function, entirely replicative of the ideal conditions envisioned by Habermas. As such, other concepts of the public sphere such as Young (1996) and Mouffe's (1999) as well as those from other China theorists such as Wakeman (1996) and Kluver and Qiu (2003) should be examined in conjunction with Habermas'in order to more accurately understand the Chinese Weibo phenomenon.