National Library of China to archive social media posts

The National Library of China will archive over 200 billion public posts on popular microblogging site Weibo, as part of a project to preserve the country’s digital heritage, reports the Star.

More than 200 million news stories published on news portal Sina.com, which is owned by Weibo Sina Corp, will also be archived. National library director Rao Quan said the project aims to ‘chronicle the evolution of civilisation in the internet era for the long-term development of information security and digitisation of the country’.

The library said it had chosen to partner with Weibo, which had 462 million active users at the end of 2018, because its trove of data records both significant social events and public reaction to them. Other Chinese companies will be invited to participate in the project.

In late 2017, the US Library of Congress announced it would start selectively collecting messages posted on Twitter. Previously, it had collected every post to the platform since March 2006.

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