A case study on micro-blog communication characteristics related to haze during the Harbin haze disaster

After 19 October 2013, a nasty haze settled over Harbin, a Chinese north city. This haze air disaster lasted a week or so. In this research, a case study about Sina Weibo platform, a typical Chinese micro-blog system, was conducted to investigate the values of new media technology and the special diffusion characteristics of the haze disaster micro-blog messages. To understand how people used Sina Weibo in respond to haze disaster, a content analysis was carried out by manual and automatic classification. Further, a trend analysis was implemented according to different category messages. The results showed that people have great information needs during haze spreading process and the Sina Weibo platform could play different roles in response to haze disaster in different phases. In addition, this work helped us to explore a new view to understand people´s behavior in disaster phases which is contributed to guide them correctly and validly.