According to an article published by China's state news agency, the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) just released a new estimate on how many microblog users China has: 274 million -- just 12% less than the entire population of the United States.
Among those, over 18,000 microblog accounts have been opened by government and Communist Party agencies -- many of them at the local level -- as of last October.
Why do so many branches of the state apparatus feel compelled to use this form of communication?
As we've mentioned in class, there is an active debate about whether microblogs are useful in social network analysis. But China's authorities and citizenry alike have realized the power of these tools to communicate a message.
As the article says, "Governments have realized the influence of social networks and put more effort in working with them."
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Definitely worth investigating links between these microblogs, as we discussed. I'm pretty sure that the Chinese gov't is using SNA to pick out the influential (eigenvector central) and facilitating (high betweenness or closeness) bloggers.
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