Strategies for the management of the government affairs microblogs in China based on the SNA of fifty government affairs microblogs in Beijing

Abstract

Today the government affairs microblog in China plays a very significant role in the public service area, providing a bridge between the government departments as well as their officials and the public and a channel for the public to supervise the government. However, with the development of mobile Internet, the government affairs microblog has to fight with more and more other new media products to draw the public's attention. The strategies for the management of the government affairs microblogs must be improved. In this paper, we propose the strategies based on the Social Network Analysis (SNA) on 50 government affairs microblogs in Beijing on Sina Weibo. Firstly, we illustrate the current shortcomings and difficulties which the government affairs microblog is facing with. Secondly, we set up a network consisting of 50 government affairs microblogs on Sina Weibo run by the government departments in Beijing. Thirdly, we demonstrate the structural characteristics of the network with SNA from three levels, i.e. the visualization of the profile of the network, the whole network's structural characteristics with five features - density, clustering coefficient, geodesic distance, cliques and the small world effect, and the structural characteristics of individual microblogs with four features - degree, closeness, betweenness and core/periphery with the help of illustrating their identities in the real world. At last, the strategies for the management of the government affairs microblogs are discussed.