“Born in Rome” or “Sleeping Beauty”: Emergence of hashtag popularity on the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo

Competition for popularity and interventions on a Chinese microblogging site

“…Public attention is precious and it is nowadays largely dependent on online social media, therefore it is of great interest to understand the dynamics governing popularity on such platforms. Considerable effort has been devoted to this task on Twitter [3][4][5]8] and some results are also known on Sina Weibo [16,17,19]. In order to attract attention, people, companies, and political actors are tempted to make use of hidden manipulations besides well known tools of direct advertisements or propaganda [11,12,15,19,27].…”

“…Before the hashtags gain enough popularity and land on the HSL, they go through different propagation routes during their prehistory. The time length of the prehistories t HSL differ for different hashtags [19]. Some hashtags get to the HSL in very short time after birth, while others take longer.…”

“…The Hot Search List (HSL) on Sina Weibo, with a role similar to Twitter trending list, is a major source for people from mainland China to obtain real-time information about the popularity of topics. Research on Weibo hot topics has focused on topic dynamics from the perspective of time, geography, demographics, emotion, retweeting, and correlation [16], on similarities and differences to Twitter [17,18], emergence mechanisms [19], patterns of popularity evolution [20], prediction [21][22][23], social emotions and diffusion patterns [24] as well as impact of censorship [25].…”

“…The exposure of hashtags on the HSL has a great promotional effect thus many are keen to be on the list, resulting in strong competition and manipulation attempts. Studies reveal that hashtags from different topical categories differ in time length of prehistory (from birth till first appearance on the HSL) and the types of accounts involved in the propagation [19]. Celebrity and entertainment related hashtags are often associated with marketing accounts [26] which can be influenced by social capital [19].…”

“…Studies reveal that hashtags from different topical categories differ in time length of prehistory (from birth till first appearance on the HSL) and the types of accounts involved in the propagation [19]. Celebrity and entertainment related hashtags are often associated with marketing accounts [26] which can be influenced by social capital [19]. Recent findings indicate possibility of algorithmic intervention [27] from the platform provider towards COVID-related hashtags on the HSL during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”