Understanding Patterns of Users Who Repost Censored Posts on Weibo

Abstract

In this study, we focus on understanding patterns of users whose repost contents would later be censored on Weibo, a counterpart of Twitter in China as a social media platform. Little is known about the way regulations and censorship work in this indigenous platform and what role it plays in affecting users' expression of ideas. We collect over a million reposts from over 18,000 users and investigate the patterns of users whose reposts contain content that is no longer visible to the public, from the perspective of user location, device, gender, social capital as well as certified status. We find that user characteristics play an important role in affecting behaviors on Weibo.