Digital Essay 2: Analysis of Weibo

As I discussed in previous Digital Essay, Weibo is the gadget which is associated with me closely and essential to my daily life. As the only possible substitute of Twitter, I have to use Weibo frequently every day. Therefore, this time I am going to examine Weibo with four affordances and five principles of new media to see the digital value of this social platform.

Firstly, for the four affordances, I think Weibo is related with them very well. Weibo is procedural because it does consist of executable rules as this term explains. As a micro blog, it is programmed by professional programmers. During the time period I used Weibo, there was not any major crash or error, thus I believe the stability and correctness of the programming. Also, we follow certain rules to post and repost micro blogs, just like how we do with Twitter, so Weibo is procedural no matter in the view of its developers and users. Weibo is actually participatory without doubt since we all communicate and make comments through it. Participation makes up Weibo, and I think nearly every user is involved in it. Weibo is also encyclopedic for the storage of abundant information. Like I mentioned in my previous Digital Essay, I get aware of daily news and happenings by referring to Weibo. We can read text, watch short videos and listen to music on Weibo, thus the information is presented in different versions of media to us. Once the micro blog or comment is published, it would never be deleted without human intervention. Therefore, multiple media formats show massive information to us on Weibo. For the last affordance "spatial", I think this is the crucial characteristic of Weibo. In fact Weibo serves as a virtual community to us. Usually we do not care much about its functions or rules since it is easy to handle. Also, Weibo consists of participation but it does not require everyone to take part in. We do not need to post micro blog or make comments every time we use it. Depending on the amount of users we follow, the amount and types of information we receive varies. However, especially for me, Weibo represents the exclusive zone for me in Internet. Since I established my account, this has been my own virtual world. I can do whatever I want to do on Weibo without any other's disturbance. I do not need to show up my real side, and I can communicate with any one I do not need to recognize in the real world arbitrarily. Therefore, I think I find a sense of belongingness in Internet on Weibo, which is crucial for my life in Internet. Through the analysis of Weibo with the four affordances, I believe the "spatial" property of Weibo might be the reason that I keep using Weibo these years.

On the other hand, for the five principles of media, I am not sure Weibo can perfectly fit into all of them literally. Therefore, a careful analysis in detail is necessary. Of course, Weibo obeys the numerical representation. It is precisely programmed through algorithms. Also, Weibo is programmable because it is able to beautify the pictures uploaded to it. Users can easily change settings of the platform to what they prefer. As a result, Weibo follows the principle of numerical representation. Modularity is also another significant principle of Weibo. Weibo contains text, images and video, which are all of the media elements. We can not only use Weibo on the phone app but also on web page, thus there should be more structures of it to explore. I think Weibo can only obey the low-level automation on Weibo. We can deal with words, pictures and videos, while we cannot make Weibo to do some something at upper level. For its accessibility to public, it is not intentionally designed sophistically so that it lacks the functions described as high-level automation such as AI or VR. I do not consider "variability" as a principle of Weibo. Since Weibo is published, it has never experienced any major changes which could completely overturn the use of it. I do not think the interface of it change so much between six years ago on the first day I used Weibo and today. Most of its content is in text, with some pictures or videos for specifics. I do not expect some important changes of Weibo in the future since I have already gotten used to its current version. If they try to change it, it would lose a large amount of users like me. It would be wise to keep its current version and do some maintenance or updates in detail. For the last principle, I am unsure about the accurate definition of "transcoding", but Weibo itself may serve to convey information from "computer layer" to "cultural layer". In recent years, the influence of Weibo is constantly increasing. Many celebrities, media authorities and even political party opened their accounts on Weibo. Some extremely hot micro blogs can even be reposted million of times. News media has taken Weibo as a reliable source, and Weibo also reflects netizens' attitudes toward certain issues. Therefore, Weibo may not only be a digital gadget but also represent a cultural phenomenon. Through the analysis of the five principles, I realized that the simplicity in its function is the key to push it viral.

As above, Weibo meets the four affordances of digital medium but not all the principles of new media. I think this accords with the core of Weibo. Its main purpose is as a medium of communication. Users can get into it without much understanding of phone, computer, internet or digital technology. It is accessible to everyone, thus this is the reason why it can capture plenty users including me. Digital media objects should focus on user experience instead of other complicated but unnecessary functions.

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