The city’s adoption of a platform called Weibo highlights a trend in adopting mediums to engage immigrants via their native language and native social media.
Alhambra Police Department was the first to adopt such an approach back in 2013 and it has paid dividends as the department reports a 60% increase in service calls requiring Chinese translation.
Weibo’s Northern California office reports over 400,000 users are based in California, in addition to droves of other users in foreign countries following the U.S.-based profiles.
Walter Yu, a part-time court interpreter, has been instrumental in getting a number of California-based Weibo accounts off the ground. He says, “It's not just a language barrier. Chinese immigrants are also trying to understand democratic governments, which offer more participation than they may be accustomed to.” Furthermore, it also helps when information is presented in a more familiar context.
With nearly half of San Gabriel’s population being Chinese, officials see the Weibo account as part of an effort to expand the amount of city business being done in a language familiar to its residents, namely Mandarin.
Going forward, the Weibo account will likely be used for everything from the announcement of bulky item pickup policies to promoting Chinese tourism.
The full report on San Gabriel and Weibo can be found here.
The San Gabriel Weibo feed can be seen here, it is somewhat reminiscent of Twitter’s layout.
Image Credit: Flickr User jonrussell, https://flic.kr/p/bE1htZ via (CC BY-ND 2.0)