A Content Analysis Of Sock Puppet Accounts On Weibo

With the development of Internet technology,social media has became the main communication channel for users.Weibo provides users with the selective control of the audience,and combines the openness and privacy.In that case,the social relationship includes strong relationships,weak relationships,and even no relationships in Weibo platform.Consequently,unusual behavior like Sock Puppet has emerged.These users hide their personal information on the one hand and conduct high-level self-disclosure on the other.Such user behavior research is of great significance for us to understand the emotions or interests of acquaintance circles that are suppressed in a connected society.Therefore,the author will discuss on Sock Puppet based on their microblog to analyzes the user characteristics and user behavior characteristics.Based on the"anonymity" feature,the author defines it as:the Account there are no acquaintances or only with close friends on Weibo platform.In this study,We use content analysis to analyze 200 user samples and 20000 text samples from the four aspects:microblog style,microblog content,interactive behavior,and microblog time.The result shows:There are significantly more female users,and there is no excessive exposure of information.The behavioral characteristics of the users shows that the recording style&commentary style is most widely used,and to disseminate information in the form of textual elements at most;The content mainly conveys the emotional state of the self or others as well as the life record,and more content Showing negative emotion;what's more,largely number of users is more highly self-disclosed,and the degree of interaction is lower;Besides,the Sock Puppet has a significant difference on time variable.The study found that the topic has a significant correlation between the microblog style,interaction behavior,and microblog time.To sum up,the types of sock puppet includes:1)Non-mainstream:unspeakable hobby;2)Difficulties expressed emotion in reality:the release of negative emotions and storage of positive emotions;3)Masquerade:unleash an alter ago;4)Diary:exuberant expression;5)Training ground-recluse practice;6)Shangri-La:fear of being watched.The reasons for sock puppet are 1)Confucian culture influences personality conflicts;2)Anonymity brings security.