Start Date
11-8-2016
Description
We conducted an interpretive, qualitative research study to investigate herding behavior around trending posts about disasters on Sina Weibo, one of the most popular social media websites in China. Our preliminary results show that in response to uncertain situations, users engage in sensemaking (Seidel, 2013) and become emotionally engaged (Taylor, 2015) as they converge around trending posts about disasters. Also, state, effect and response uncertainty (Milliken, 1987) may influence how users converge around these posts. Future research will examine the cross-cultural differences of herding behavior across Twitter (U.S.A) and Sina Weibo (China), as well as the differences across financial, scandalous, product based, and political trending posts.
Recommended Citation
Tan, Xuan and Cousins, Karlene, "Herding Behavior in Social Media Networks in China" (2016). AMCIS 2016 Proceedings. 3.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2016/Global/Presentations/3
Herding Behavior in Social Media Networks in China
We conducted an interpretive, qualitative research study to investigate herding behavior around trending posts about disasters on Sina Weibo, one of the most popular social media websites in China. Our preliminary results show that in response to uncertain situations, users engage in sensemaking (Seidel, 2013) and become emotionally engaged (Taylor, 2015) as they converge around trending posts about disasters. Also, state, effect and response uncertainty (Milliken, 1987) may influence how users converge around these posts. Future research will examine the cross-cultural differences of herding behavior across Twitter (U.S.A) and Sina Weibo (China), as well as the differences across financial, scandalous, product based, and political trending posts.