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Figure 1: Message content
4.3 Message Types
Message types are divided into “Routine Message”, “Live
Message” and “Emergency Message”. “Routine Message” means
the regularly news published by the government, like the
government's recent work, the news of government's projects.
"Live Message" is the live webcast message concerned about the
government's activities. "Emergency Message" is about the
emergency events issued by the government, such as floods,
hurricane. According to the collected data, the most number is
“Routine Message”, 164, accounting to 79.6%. The least number
is “Emergency Message”, accounting to 1.5%.
Table 3: Message types
Type Quantity Percentage
Routine Message 164 79.6
Live Message 39 18.9
Emergency Message 3 1.5
Total 206 100.0
4.4 Message Forms
During the observation, Message Forms are composed as
following: "text", "picture", "music", "video", "link", "cartoon".
Sometime, one Message is composed by several forms. The 203
message contains the form of “text”, accounting for 98.5%. The
message contains the forms of "picture", "cartoon", "link", and
"video" separately accounting for 51, 46, 35, and 6. There is no
message using the form of “music”.
396
Figure 2: Message forms
4.5 Message Sources
Message Sources is divided into three categories, “Spontaneous
Message” means the message is issued by the government;
“Forwarding Message with Comments” means the message is
forward from other’s microblog with the government’s comment;
“Forwarding Message without Comments” means the message is
forward from other’s microblog without the government’s
comment;. According to the collected data, the most number is the
“Spontaneous Message”, 150, accounting for 72.8%. “Forwarding
Message with Comments” and “Forwarding Message without
Comments” just has 39 and 17.
Figure 3: Message sources
4.6 Directing
The one of application of Sina Weibo is to use the “@” function
to push the message to particular user directly, which could
enhance the efficiency of information sharing. From the data,
there are just two messages using the function.
Table 4: Directing
Yes or No Quantity Percentage
Yes 2 1.0
No 204 99.0
Total 206 100.0