Seeing red sparks interaction

Anger is the most-easily transmitted emotion on micro blogs in China, according to research conducted by researchers with the Group of Advanced Network Analysis at the State Key Laboratory of Software Development Environment of Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics.

The researchers based their study on data from Sina Weibo from April to September 2010, including 70 million micro blogs and the individual information of 200,000 active users.

"Unlike more-social websites such as Facebook, 'followship' on social network services like Sina Weibo and Twitter is not built upon trustworthiness, but is more about exchanging news and information," one of the GANA researchers told guokr.com, an online forum for those interested in science and technology.

"But when it comes to the discussion of the influence on emotion, we need strong social relationships as the basis for our study, so we define the social relationship by examining whether the users forward each other's micro blogs," said the researcher.

The researchers believe that two micro blog users can only form trustworthy social connections if they interact with each other at least 30 times. Based on these social connections, the research team built a trustworthy micro blog social network and subdivided emotions into four kinds: Anger, joy, depression and disgust. The analysis of the emotions led to the conclusion that most interaction on micro blogs is prompted by feelings of anger. Joy, disgust and, finally, depression are subsidiary to this driving force.

They also found that two types of events provoke anger most easily; hot domestic topics, such as food safety and official corruption, and disputes between China and other countries.

- Yang Yang