Page 85 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 3. Contextual Background

line community among tertiary institution in 2008. In August 2009, Xiaonei officially

changed its name to Renren and repositioned itself beyond the student market. The
name changes from Xiaonei (‘on campus’) to Renren (‘everyone’) reflected its determi-
nation for transition to be a SNS not merely dedicated to university students, but to all
Chinese internet users. To expand its market, some additional features were launched,
such as the customisation of personal interface and profile, an advanced search func-

tion, alumni communities and interest groups.
Renren gained success in the following years, but with the rise of Weibo and We-
Chat, it has experienced a huge decline, and its market value has shrunk nearly 92%

from 2011 to 2017 (Wang, 2017).

3.3.5 Microblogging in China

In recent years, microblogs have emerged as an important social media platform
for Chinese citizens to share information, to debate and to network, (Svensson, 2014)
and in 2010 microblogging made its big breakthrough in China. Several important
news stories and public events were first spread in the microblog sphere, which made

more people turn to microblogs to obtain timely and accurate information. Whereas the
use of Twitter in the West is quite low in most countries – for example, only 18% of the
American population used Twitter in 2013 – a bigger percentage of the Chinese inter-
net population is actively using microblogs. According to official statistics, 55.8% of

Chinese citizens have access to the internet in 2018 and 40.9% of them are microblogs
users (CNNIC, 2018). The 2017 Sina Weibo report indicated a total of 376 million
monthly active microblog accounts (Weibo Data Center, 2017). Diversity is shown in
the identity of microblog accounts: both general citizens and organisations use it as a

main social media. A strong need for a public space is revealed through the popularity
of microblogs. Chinese people need a place where they can make a voice, acquire and
disseminate information. Yang claims that:
‘like users of other Chinese SNS, Weibo users do all sorts of things. Most people

are engaged in chitchat, sharing even the most intimate details about personal life.
Others talk about current affairs and politics. Still others use it for civic organising

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