Water Army phenomenon on the Internet in China

Every post earning a few cents forms millions of dollars of industry "Network Water Army". Water Army provides job opportunities for netizens, college students and unemployed people. public relations companies are particularly interested in this, they often employ the Water Army to create public opinions. For example, before the TV series were released, shuijun published a large number of cutting-edge news related to male and female actors on many websites and forums, regardless of the front or back.

The researchers collected 53723 and 115491 records from Sina and Sohu respectively, and screened 552 posts from 20738 Sina users and 223 posts from 1220 Sohu users, analyze the posting mode of shuijun. They noticed that the number of new posts sent by paying shuijun is more than the number of replies, and half of them share a post every 2.5 minutes on average. They exit from a discussion faster than normal users, ID is usually used once. Most of the contents published by shuijun are copied and pasted. The researchers designed software to identify the Water Army, with an accuracy of 88%.

 

Author: Lu songsong