How to analyze the openness of WeChat circle of friends in the era of big data?

摘要

As one of the most rapidly developing social networking platforms, WeChat circle of friends is becoming increasingly important in young people's lives. In 2019, WeChat official active users exceeded 1.1 billion, becoming an eternal hot spot in the network circle and deeply loved by college students. However, most of the current studies on WeChat focus on the use frequency and published content, while few studies explore the openness of WeChat friend circle. Our study is a positive step to evaluate this phenomenon. In this study, the degree of openness of WeChat friend circle is combined with gender, and the personality dimension is introduced as a variable, aiming to reveal whether the personality dimension plays a mediating role between gender and openness of WeChat friend circle. The sample included 699 self-selected Chinese Internet users (273 men) aged between 18 and 25. Participants were asked to complete a paper questionnaire, including the WeChat circle of friends open questionnaire and a simplified NEO five-factor scale. The results showed that WeChat openness was positively correlated with neuroticism and negatively correlated with agreeableness. These results suggest that people of different genders and personalities tend to differ in how open they are to friends.