It is difficult to refute rumors on instant messaging service WeChat because users’ feeds are private.

New media is playing a bigger role in society as it continues growing, but it also poses key challenges due to rumormongering and cyber security concerns, according to the Blue Book of New Media: Annual Report on Development of New Media in China (2015) released on June 24.

Rapid growth
New media refers to content available on-demand through the Internet and accessible on digital devices. People use it for socializing, communication, shopping, e-commerce, travel, education and other services.   

New media has become an indispensable part of many people’s daily lives, the blue book found. Applications for finance, education, health care, transportation and other services based on the mobile Internet are continuously emerging and being extensively employed in tertiary industry.
 

Growth of the number of new media users is slowing, according to the blue book. In 2014, the amount of China’s Internet users hit 649 million, up 31.17 million from 2013, while the proportion of Internet users among the whole population increased by 2.1 percent from 2013, reaching 47.9 percent. It is estimated that China will have approximately 700 million Internet users by the end of 2015, accounting for at least half of the population, while mobile Internet users are expected to exceed 600 million.
 

The blue book found that new media is beginning to exhibit a “whole-industry” trend following Premier Li Keqiang’s support for the “Internet Plus” concept in his government work report issued on March 5. The plan calls for a new economic pattern driven by new media as it develops as a “whole industry.”
In 2015, new media will accelerate entering its “whole-industry” mode and create more job opportunities and contribute more to GDP.
 

Rumors, other challenges
While China’s new media is embracing unprecedented opportunities, it is also presenting new challenges, said Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) vice- president Li Peilin, citing cyber security, integration of new and traditional media, Internet financial supervision and online rumormongering as examples.

One of the blue book’s sub-reports, titled “The Phenomenon and Governance Strategy of False News in the Age of New Media,” analyzed 92 rumors widely circulated in 2014, 59 percent of which originated on microblogging platform Sina Weibo. Researchers noted Weibo is an online forum for information with a high level of openness. However, the ability for users’ posts to reach potentially hundreds of millions of users makes it susceptible to online rumormongering.
 

In August 2014, a video of a foreigner fainting on the Shanghai subway triggering panicked passengers to flee went viral and sparked heated discussion among Internet users. However, subway authorities claimed the video gave viewers the wrong impression because it didn’t show staff coming to the victim’s aid.
 

Instant messaging service WeChat has also come under fire for spreading rumors. While only 7 percent of false news in China originates from WeChat, it is difficult to refute rumors because users’ feeds are private unlike Weibo.
 

The report analyzed 625 rumors on public WeChat accounts, most of which were about food safety, personal security, disease and false statistics.
 

The blue book is the sixth annual report on new media produced by the Institute of Journalism and Communication Studies at CASS. This year’s report comprised five sections: general report, hot topics, investigation reports, communication research and sector reports.

Wu Jing is a reporter at the Chinese Social Sciences Today.