China Faces Social Media Backlash With New Virus Outbreak
- Users questioned the speed of information sharing by officials
- Dilemma between spreading awareness and controlling dissent
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Hundreds of millions of Chinese web users have been furiously discussing the outbreak of a new deadly virus that’s killed nine people and infected hundreds.
Posts on the infection spreading to medical staff -- a development that marks a new phase of severity for the outbreak -- were viewed more than 1.5 billion times on Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like service, while a Beijing News editorial calling for a transparent system of information updates got more than 100,000 views on WeChat, the country’s most popular messaging app.