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.

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Aug 11th, 12:00 AM

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.