Beyond the Wall: Mapping Twitter in China

Song, Sonya; Faris, Robert; Kelly, John W.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2685358

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…17 This rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that Hong Kong has around 65 times more Twitter users per internet user than China does, despite having similar language, culture, alternative social media sites like Sina Weibo and Wechat, and political reasons to join Twitter. The Hong Kong-China Twitter comparison suggests that the small costs of evasion of the firewall are generally effective in keeping mainland users off of the blocked website, a finding that is largely consistent with previous research (Song, Faris, and Kelly 2015;Chen and Yang 2017).…”

Section: Who Typically Evades Censorship?supporting

confidence: 86%

How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information

2018

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Conventional wisdom assumes that increased censorship will strictly decrease access to information. We delineate circumstances when increases in censorship expand access to information for a substantial subset of the population. When governments suddenly impose censorship on previously uncensored information, citizens accustomed to acquiring this information will be incentivized to learn methods of censorship evasion. These evasion tools provide continued access to the newly blocked information—and also extend users’ ability to access information that has long been censored. We illustrate this phenomenon using millions of individual-level actions of social media users in China before and after the block of Instagram. We show that the block inspired millions of Chinese users to acquire virtual private networks, and that these users subsequently joined censored websites like Twitter and Facebook. Despite initially being apolitical, these new users began browsing blocked political pages on Wikipedia, following Chinese political activists on Twitter, and discussing highly politicized topics such as opposition protests in Hong Kong.

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Section: Who Typically Evades Censorship?supporting

confidence: 86%

How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information

2018

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“…More importantly, choosing Twitter for data collection is even more relevant here given that Twitter represents an alternative public sphere in China (Wu and Mai, 2019) despite the platform being blocked in China. Millions of Chinese internet users regularly “jump the wall,” as it is referred to in Mandarin, circumventing censorship protocols (Song et al, 2015), with some even using the platform to disseminate and share knowledge about censorship evasion (Xu and Feng, 2015). Twitter access is also a proxy for the segment of the Chinese population that is likely to be key publics for the D&G case (in comparison to the Chinese general public).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking crisis dynamics from the perspective of online publics: A case study of Dolce & Gabbana’s China crisis

Ban

Lovari

2021

Public Relations Inquiry

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On November 18, 2018, the Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana (D&G) released a controversial video on all their social media channels. The video triggered an instant outcry from the general Chinese public, who called the video a racist caricature of Chinese culture. D&G responded to the crisis with several image repair strategies. This study examines D&G’s crisis communication efforts in the wake of this incident. Departing from corporate-oriented perspectives prevalent in the field of public relations, this study employs a dynamic, public-oriented view of crisis communication, which focuses on the dynamic, interactive process of crisis development from the standpoint of the publics. By analyzing communicative behavior on Twitter (an increasingly influential alternative public sphere in China) and in particular, comments and responses toward the crisis communication strategies employed by D&G, we have identified four prominent themes, or ways that publics framed their key messages against the corporation: “Apology not enough”; “Apology done badly”; “Call to unite against D&G”; and “Sarcasm, mockery, and abuse.” And they can be interpreted as a number of crisis communication strategies of the global, online publics. Based on our analysis of the D&G case, we discuss the theoretical implications of a dynamic, public-oriented perspective (DPOP) on crisis communication, highlighting its key areas of difference from the corporate-oriented perspective (COP).

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“…Twitter, along with several other international social media platforms, has not been legitimately accessible to users in China since 2009. However, a study conducted in 2015 estimated that users who reside in mainland China, and those who reside outside but who are significantly connected in following or interacting with users inside mainland China, together hold 8,275 Twitter accounts (Song, Faris, & Kelly, 2015).…”

Section: China's News Media On Twittermentioning

confidence: 99%

China’s news media tweeting, competing with US sources

Nip

Sun

2018

WPCC

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This paper examines China's recent initiative on international social media and assesses its effectiveness in counteracting Western dominance in international communication. Analysing data collected from the Twitter platform of three public accounts run by China's state news media CGTN, People's Daily and Xinhua News, it finds that their news agenda about China focuses on the country's top leaders and achievements, while that about other countries is on breaking news. Their China-related tweets receive more positive replies than their non-China-related tweets, but tweets about China's top leader, Xi Jinping, receive fewer positive replies than soft news items. Analysis of Twitter data of the #southchinasea hashtag finds that China's media mainly compete with US sources for influence. China's state media influence the news agenda on the issue by active and persistent tweeting and drawing retweets. However, US sources are more influential as a whole in setting the news agenda and amplifying certain news events. The study finds evidence that forces seemingly unfriendly to both China and the US attempt to skew the news agenda of #southchinasea using manipulated accounts.

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Beyond the Wall: Mapping Twitter in China

Cited by 7 publications

References 16 publications

How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information

How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information

Rethinking crisis dynamics from the perspective of online publics: A case study of Dolce & Gabbana’s China crisis

China’s news media tweeting, competing with US sources

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