Nearly 60 percent of "fake" news reports are first posted on Weibo while Tuesdays see the peak of rumors on popular social networking app Wechat, according to a blue paper on new media released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on Wednesday, China News Service reported.
According to the blue paper, China has 649 million netizens or 21.6 percent of the world's Internet population.
The paper analyzed 92 "fake" news reports that circulated online. It found that 59 percent of them were first posted on Weibo, while 32 percent started from online media.
Weibo became the top source of "fake" news due to its openness as any person can make posts on it, said the blue paper.
Only 7 percent of the "fake" news originated from Wechat, as it is more difficult to spread rumors on the platform which features an acquaintance circle, but also made them harder to disprove.
The paper also looked into 625 rumors widely spread on Wechat between November 2014 and February this year. It found that most of the rumors were spread between Mondays and Wednesdays, with Tuesdays as the peak.
The number of rumors dropped on Thursdays and Fridays but rose again on Saturdays.
Most of the rumors touched on food security, personal safety, health issues and fraud prevention.
Residents in China's coastal regions were more concerned about the rumors, likely because of the attention they give to their living standards and better Internet skills, the paper said.
