How "big vs" dominate chinese microblog: a comparison of verified and unverified users on sina weibo

Sina Weibo has become the most popular microblogging platform in the Chinese-speaking community. Verification scheme is a distinctive element of Weibo with an aim to help the public to identify genuine accounts and select trustworthy information sources. Verified users are also known as "Big Vs", who are identified by a verification badge, a capitalised letter "V" added alongside account name. By comparing statistical characteristics of both verified and unverified users, this paper presents that a minority of verified users are largely consider as influentials, who tend to be more central in the networks and play vital roles in keeping connectivity as well as network robustness. Although the verification scheme is likely to draw more users to become influentials, user behaviours are still considerably more influenced by user roles rather than by verification scheme.