Data and privacy
Enning Road Weibo Network · Mashi Street Protection Movement, Guangzhou
Public network coverage
| Measure | Public atlas |
|---|---|
| Directed edge records | 1,002 |
| Anonymised nodes | 1,124 |
| Weighted interactions | 1,010 |
| Non-empty ten-minute intervals | 178 |
| Core movement period | 21–28 September 2012 |
The associated article reports an initial collection of 1,038 retweets and 1,147 users. This atlas uses the structurally valid records present in the supplied analysis backup and states the difference explicitly.
Removed information
- post, repost, and message text;
- usernames, nicknames, display names, and profile information;
- original platform and analysis identifiers;
- source labels stored in the Gephi project;
- the original spreadsheets and Gephi project;
- the private original-to-public identifier mapping.
Public identifiers and roles
Nodes receive fresh random identifiers in the form ER####. These identifiers are unrelated to source order, source IDs, names, degree ranking, or appearance time. The mapping was not written into the release.
The interface retains the published role labels Media-1 and CSO-1. It does not disclose the corresponding account names or original identifiers. All remaining nodes are represented as anonymous actors.
Temporal and structural processing
Source timestamps are rounded down to ten-minute intervals in China Standard Time. The atlas displays non-empty intervals only. ForceAtlas2 coordinates, Louvain communities, HITS scores, PageRank, betweenness, and degree measures were recomputed from the anonymised directed structure.
Residual disclosure risk
Network topology itself can carry information. A person with independent access to the original network and substantial auxiliary information could attempt structural matching. The public release reduces this risk through content removal, identifier replacement, time rounding, mapping suppression, and exclusion of the raw files. It does not claim formal differential privacy or legal certification of anonymisation.
Associated article
He, J., Lin, Y., Hooimeijer, P., & Monstadt, J. (2024). “Informal participation in digital planning: How can third parties use social media to shift power relations in planning?” Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 114, 102193.