The Content Selection And Self Presentation Of Micro-blog Users

The micro-blog was introduced in China four years ago, which had already gained asurging trend of popularity now. In January2013, the China Internet Network InformationCenter（CINIC）released a new “China Internet Development Statistics Report”, which saidthat up to the end of2012, China’s micro-blog users had reached309million. Sina Weibo, asthe most successful one, firmly occupy87.67%of its users’ share. As an example, thisdissertation chooses Sina Weibo as a justifiable illustration to find out what, why and how theChinese micro-bloggers express themselves when selecting sources and contents.With the increasing number of fixed users and the increasing using depth in micro-blogsites, the author cannot help to ask: whether the individual expression day to day, throughoutmicro-blog may follow the "performance" mechanism, as that the same in interpersonalcommunication? People may prefer to use the tools of "follow","retweet" and "tweet"spontaneously to select and build an ideal image of oneself. On the basis of uses&gratifications and the social drama theory, the author would like to analysis the process ofmicro-blog expression. Using the official tools from Sina Corp.:“the top50influentialcelebrities list”,“the monthly top50tweets list”,"the micro-blog genius top10List" as thesample pool, then pick out typical tweets and core statistics to analyze, and eventually drawkey conclusions as follow:Firstly, micro-blogger who have empowered with rules to select and spread contents&sources initiatively, thus to achieve some emotion needs as "the access to personal idealimages “and "enhance the images of one’s expectations”.Secondly, when micro-blogger selecting ones to be followed, they are inclined toentertainment stars which are well packed with stories and celebrities who are based on thecultural centered cities in China. It is resealed by the bloggers’ industry and geographicaltendency; when selecting particular content to share, they are apparently inclined to theentertainment topics, and entwisted with people’s desire to succeed and abide of the belief of“Zhongyong” in traditional Chinese context, which is manifested through the hot topic andtext style tendency; As to the use generated content, they seem more inclined to activelyselect the daily beautiful fragments, rather than the fictional or overstating “performances”.The entire contents eventually form a definition of the micro-blogging context imperceptibly,thereby affecting people in there to “perform” and act accurately in the "front stage".Additionally, the author also found that Sina Weibo meets users’ idealized performing ultimately with interactions between individuals and celebrities; and tools of "forward" and"release" shows different patterns in effect with one’s "self presentation".