Research on the WeChat Information Transmission Topology Based on Social Network Analysis

ABSTRACT

With the rapid development of mobile internet technology, Social Media has become an important way for us to communicate with others. Meanwhile, Social Media is regarded as the most popular information exchange and knowledge-sharing platform by more and more people, making its network structure and information transmission topology attract wide attention. WeChat is one of the most commonly used Social Media in China, which was developed by Tencent in 2011. As the number of WeChat customers is very huge, traditional analytical methods have become non-applicable. In this paper, we tried to use Social Network Analysis (SNA), which is capable of handling huge data, to reveal the relationship networks of WeChat. On this basis, we chose a WeChat user randomly and listed groups that he participated in. Through analyzing its network architecture and data indicators, we found out three main information transmission topologies of WeChat.

Keywords:

Information transmission topology, Social network analysis, WeChat, Social media, Network density, UCINET.