Weibo Contributes to the Popularity of Ice Bucket Challenge in China

Aug. 22, 2014

Recently, the most popular national entertainment event will certainly be the "Ice Bucket Challenge". Currently, discussions of the "bucket challenges" has reached 1.81 billion. The first person to take the challenge, Lei Jun completed his challenge on Aug. 18. only four or five days later, in such a short time, the discussion is really surprisingly hot, which once again confirms the fact that Weibo played a vital role in spreading such a hot event.
From a global perspective, except that the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg choose to publish the information of his challenge on Facebook, other participating celebrities are undoubtedly publish their own challenges through microblogging. The openness and weak ties of microblogging allow the rapid flow of information about celebrities, but also allow the same challenges of the information passed down like a "flower drum transfer". Microblogging becomes a major social networks in the spreading of the "ice bucket challenge".
As to why "Ice Bucket Challenge" becomes popular? The author of this article analyzes three reasons. First, the channels. Here they refer to mainly two aspects, one is the social networking platform, in fact, the subject is microblogging. Another is the star, stars have a lot of fanson microblog, which is also a huge influence on microblogging. Through this media, they are not only involved in the subject of this action, but also an important channel for the dissemination of the action. 
By microblogging and other social networks, everyone are connected globally. The speed of information flow is very rapid just beyond imagination, especially for the pandemic virus like "Ice Bucket Challenge" , social networking has no resistance. It is like dry wood encountering fire, which is hard not burnt together. The nature of weak ties microblogging has also help the spread of the "Ice Bucket Challenge".
As we all know, the participants are popular stars, who have a strong "star effect." Stars themselves are the focus of public opinion. The fact that they participate in all actions has a topic of conversation. This topic makes rapid information flow leading the rapid spread of this action. Of course, a behavior is so popular, just like a virus epidemic, certainly with trigger mechanism or incentive. Then how "Ice Bucket Challenge" spread? First, the design of this action has a rule that is the challenger to nominate three other persons involved in the challenge. Celebrity nominations also are celebrities. You can make this action through such "nomination mechanism" like a virus spreading. Microblogging @ function, simply like "flower drum transfer" with natural facilitate transfer behavior, can easily "deliver a messenge" to the next challenger. 
With the driving force of star microblogging, enthusiasm of Internet users are also lit up, sharing this entertainment events everyday and ervrywher, which also play a big role. As previously mentioned, users are very happy to see celebrities' wet body "or" embarrassment "of the video, not to mention this is a selfe-teasing with a " goodwill ". Users are more willing to share information. The collective participation of users also lead to the quickly spread of the information. 
In my opinion, microblogging play a role like a booster during the "Ice Bucket Challenge" process. First of all, microblogging has a unique social mobilization feature, which make the challenge activity among celebrities quickly extend to the media (Xinhua News Agency, CCTV), government agencies, businesses (COFCO), universal love among people; more and more bystanders turn into participants. 

（Translated by www.chinainout.com）