Microblogs Shed New Light on China's Train Crash

Here is a picture posted on Sina Weibo (Microblog) showing the July 23 bullet train crash

The best way to fully understand the July 23 bullet train crash near Wenzhou City in southeast China's Zhejiang Province is not from China's one-sided traditional media, but through microblogs that are gaining momentum in China. Microblog has gained much popularity in China since 2010, attracting millions of users who have extended its use beyond social networking and turned it into a media platform. It has surpassed Twitter both in terms of diversity of functions and amount of information. China's Twitter-like microblogs--Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo have enabled a new level of transparency, while at the same time highlighting the awkwardness and lack of accountability of the Chinese regime's way of governance.

The events of the deadly July 23 train crash, and its aftermath, are being gradually pieced together through microblogs, like a puzzle taking form. In this case, microblogs have helped gather information regarding the actual number of deaths. It also enabled family of victims to gain real-time information. In addition, microblogs contribute to call for people around to donate blood for helping those victims. 

Through the aftermath of the accident, the rapid exchange between microblogs and traditional media demonstrates the power of microblogs. The earliest messages were sent by people on the trains during the accident. "Please save us," a passenger wrote on a Twitter-like blog. "The train is leaning toward one side now. And it's totally locked. The first few carriages hit each other."

Furthermore, Microblogs also showed the world many vivid details that would have been omitted by traditional media. In this case, it includes the family members' accounts of the accident, reporters' questions and suspicions at the scene, and lawyers' professional advice to victims' families. These messages provided victims and their families with assistance, and awakened peoples' awareness of their civil rights.

The advantages of microblogs as a new media form are their speed and ability to mobilize. Their effects are revolutionary. Due to its ability to spread information quickly, they can foment the development of an incident. This is what traditional media and even Internet media lacks.

The drawback of microblogs is that the credibility of a message can be questionable. The limited length of a message makes it difficult to provide enough detail. And each person views things from his own perspective. Besides, because of Internet censorship in some countries, sometimes information post on microblogs may be “blocked”, as it happens in the Chinese train crash

It’s obvious that Microblog played an important role in facilitating public debate in the aftermath of the July 23 bullet train collision. Internet users flooded major microblog platforms, questioning the government’s handling of the accident and offering condolences to the victims. From this view, the huge power of WOM via microblogs shows a potential platform for social marketing and other marketing behaviors. Although there is still a long journey for the Chinese to get real freedom of information, Microblogs may be a good start.