Socio-Technical System
Elements
Weibo real-time trending topics list
It is the core of out socio-technical system, and the main subject of our project. It is one important function of Sina Weibo that generates current social trending topics and ranks them within every one minute to make sure users will see the hottest topics when they are using the app. All other components in this system appear as related to and this Weibo real-time trending topics list and focus on it.
Users:
Users include company official accounts, governmental official accounts, personal accounts and paid/volunteer accounts. They have all registered for one or more accounts on Sina-Weibo. Being a user of Sina-Weibo means that you can search for, like, repost, and comment on all the trending topics, which leads to the major measurement of ranking those trending topics. Users are the principal part of creating the Weibo real-time trending topics list and the basic requirement of the whole system.
Operating team:
The operating team is part of the Sina company team. It is responsible for operating the Weibo real-time trending topics list. It also receives feedback on operational problems from users. It is not significantly involved in the technical part of creating a Weibo real-time trending topics list but just helps deal with social issues such as filtering illegal topics. Therefore, the operating team assists the whole system.
Technical team:
The technical team is also part of the Sina company team. It is responsible for developing and maintaining the whole technical system. It designs and updates the front and end user interface on both the web and the app; it also processes the ranking algorithm to rank the trending topics. Therefore, the technical team is one of the most important part in this socio-technical system that runs the technical system.
Front-end user interface (web/app design):
The front-end user interface makes the Weibo real-time trending topics list visible to all the users. There are two interface design: one is for the Sina-Weibo webpage and the other is for the Sina-Weibo app. Without the front-end user interface ( web/app design), the trending topics list will not show in a clear way. Therefore, the front-end user interface shows the main subject of the system, Weibo real-time trending topics list.
Database:
The database collects information from users including their searches, likes, comments, and reposts. These information are used to measure the degree of the topics’ popularity. In other words, the database is the main body of the whole system, as the Weibo real-time trending topics list generates the hottest topics from the database. Without database, there will be no list at all.
Filter:
The filter is responsible for filtering the database. As the information in the database is directly collected from the users, there will always be some improper topics such as illegal ones and some of them may also gain popularity to appear on the list. The filter, therefore, appears to pick these improper topics out of the list in order to keep the list proper for the whole society. The filter, in this case, assists the whole system.
Ranking algorithm:
The ranking algorithm is the key to rank the trending topics based on their degree of popularity. It is the component that we are going to de-blackbox. Basically, the ranking algorithm appears as a significant tool to make the trending topics list in order so that users can see the which topics are relatively hotter. Therefore, the ranking algorithm is the key to the Weibo real-time trending topics list and the whole system.
Socio-technical system analysis
As a social media platform, Weibo’s Real-time Trending List has got certain social impacts undoubtedly. Our socio-technical diagram analyzes the relations among Weibo users, Sina Company Team and Weibo’s Technical System.
The left part of this diagram is about the front-end interaction between Weibo trending list and Weibo users. Weibo users mainly include four different types: company official accounts, governmental official accounts, personal accounts, and paid/voluntary supporters. Usually, company official accounts and governmental official accounts would have more followers. Personal accounts make up the largest part of Weibo users though they may not have many followers. Some influential Internet celebrity’s personal accounts would have many followers. Paid/voluntary supporters refer to the group of users who comment or repost highly-repeated under certain topics in order to lead the direction of public opinions for their personal interests. All these three types of accounts can post new content to Weibo. They can also search, repost, like and comment already existed content. As more users are engaged, the topic becomes hotter and then would rise up in the trending list. The engagement of users makes the topics rise up in the trending list. At the same time, the Weibo trending is also influencing public opinions potentially. When people open their Weibo and check the trending list, they would know what most other people in the society are paying attention to and how they think about the topics. People’s emotion and opinion would be influenced by the online voice. Especially after the purposeful lead by the paid/voluntary supporters, normal users are very likely to change their original judgement and consider what they see on Weibo as the truth.
The right part is the back-end part of Sina. The technical system would provide the technical support to the flow of Weibo tending list. Basically, data produced by Weibo users would be inputted into the filter system first. Then all the qualified content will be inputted into the Ranking Algorithm that will be explained in the architecture part in order to generate Weibo Real-time Trending List.
At the bottom of socio-technical system is Sina’s company organization which includes two most important teams: operating team and technical team. The technical tram is mainly responsible for designing, developing and supporting the technical system which would be applied in Weibo Trending. Operation team takes the responsibility of making sure the whole Weibo Trending system work smoothly. When the users give either positive or negative feedback, the operation could collect and convey them to technical team to improve the technical performance of the Trending system. Sometimes, company official accounts and government official accounts may request Weibo take certain topics which may create negative influence on them away from the Trending topic list. Under this condition, the operation team would make responds quickly and ask the technical team to do some adjusts to meet their needs. Therefore, the two teams also need to cooperate with each other well.
Weibo trending as a social-technical system is creating a great influence on Chinese society. It attracts more and more people to join and to discuss.
