Public opinion information dissemination in mobile social networks – taking Sina Weibo as an example

Purpose Social media, especially microblog, has become one of the most popular platforms for public opinion dissemination. However, so far few studies have been conducted to explore information dissemination under the mobile environment. This paper aims to introduce the approach to analyze the public opinion information dissemination in mobile social networks. Design/methodology/approach This paper chooses “network attack” as the research topic and extracts 23,567 relevant messages from Sina Microblogs to study the structure of nodes for public opinion dissemination and the characteristics of propagation paths on mobile internet. Public opinion dissemination is compared on both mobile and non-mobile terminals. Findings The results reveal the characteristics of public opinion dissemination in mobile environment and identify three patterns of information propagation path. This study concludes that public opinion on mobile internet propagates more widely and efficiently and generates more impact than that on the non-mobile internet. Social implications The methods used in this study can be useful for the government and other organizations to analyze and identify problems in online information dissemination. Originality/value This paper explores the mechanism of public opinion dissemination on mobile internet in China and further investigates how to improve public opinion management through a case study related to “network attack.”