在线社交网络中信息寻求行为的实证研究:以微博为例

Information-Seeking Behaviors in Online Social Networks: the Case of Microblogging

社交网络和社会化媒体的日益发展,已经对人们获取和分享信息的方式产生了重大影响。本文通过对新浪微博中以提问的方式进行的信息寻求行为的分析,探讨用户在在线社交网络中的社会资本及其他特征对信息寻求结果的影响。分析结果显示:信息寻求者在网络中比信息提供者更为活跃(微博数),而信息提供者比信息寻求者拥有较多资源(粉丝数);信息寻求者在在线社交网络中的社会资本(粉丝和关注数)越多,活跃程度越高(微博数),其信息寻求的行为越容易获得成功;此外,信息提供者中男性比例比信息寻求者中男性比例高,而女性用户作为信息寻求者的提问回复率较高。

The development of online social networks and social media has changed the ways people seek for and share information.This paper investigates how users of Sina Weibo utilize their social networks to seek for information by posting questions online to see how the social resource in one＇s online network affects the information-seeking outcomes.Results show that 1） information seekers are more active in the social network than information providers while information providers have more social resources than information seekers in terms of number of followers;2） the more resources a user has（as measured by numbers of followers and followings） and the more active a user is（as measured by number of microblogs）,the more possible that he/she will get a response for his/her question;3） the proportion of male users is higher for information providers than information seekers,while female information seekers get a higher response rate than male users.