Research on China’s city network based on users’ friend relationships in online social networks: a case study of Sina Weibo

Cities no longer develop independently but exist in a large city network in the globalization era because of the rapid development of information and communication technologies. Instead of attribute data, relational data has been widely recognized as an improved tool to analyze the importance of a city in a city network. This study attempts to analyze China’s city network based on users’ friend relationships in Sina Weibo, the most popular online social networking service in China. By collecting friend relationship data from 20 users located in the selected 51 cities, a city network is built based on connections in the virtual world. Findings show that although microblog users build friend relationships with other users located almost everywhere, significant variations exist regarding the closeness of such connections. In particular, a limited number of cities accumulate the majority of top connections; the limited number indicates the significant power of these key cities in the city network. These top connections are also highly related to cities located in Eastern China. The regression model demonstrates that a city with a higher of per capita GDP exerts a powerful influence in the city network. Compared with a prefecture-level city, a municipality directly under central government is considerably powerful. Therefore, the importance of a city in the real world has significant influence on the power of that city in the city network based on online social networking connections. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.