Think twice before reposting it: Promoting accountable behavior on Sina Weibo

Microblogging services, such as Sina Weibo and Twitter, provide a platform on which everyone can easily and quickly get and spread information. While the side effect is that not only valuable information spreads on the platform but also rumors. Rumors, as unconfirmed or false information, spread even faster through social networks and do much more harm to both online and offline society. Traditional technical approaches, like censorship, deleting posts and accounts cannot effectively reduce the impact caused by rumors on microblogging platforms. In this paper, we applied social translucence, a sociotechnical approach to design Sina Weibo Analysis Plug-in (SWAP), which includes a series of strategies to help users check the essential social evidences that would influence users´ perceptions on microblog credibility. Our contribution is that we provide a simple and practical approach to support coherent and accountable behaviors on Sina Weibo.