A Pattern Recognition Framework for Detecting Changes in Chinese Censorship

• In Event: Media Strategies and Online Censorship in China and Russia

Abstract

Past studies on Chinese internet censorship system have jointly reveal a smart internet management system that take advantage of time to filter contents with collective action potentials. How and why was Chinese internet censorship system orchestrated in the first place? We offer an historical institutional analysis to explain the way in which the system evolved. We implement social network analysis to examine the Weibo posts of recurrent events, Taiwanese elections in 2016 and 2018 to identify pattern changes in the system. The changes are in two aspects. The centralization of the command line to a single authority and the implementation of a discriminatory strategy to deal with the various online expressions altogether formulate such an intelligent system.

Authors

• Yu-Sung Su, Tsinghua University

• Yanqin Ruan

• Siyu Sun