How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument

• In Event: Propaganda, Censorship, and Information in China

Abstract

The Chinese government has long been suspected of hiring as many as 2 million people to surreptitiously insert huge numbers of pseudonymous and other deceptive writings into the stream of real social media posts, as if they were the genuine opinions of ordinary people. Many academics, and most journalists and activists, claim these so-called "50c party" posts vociferously argue for the government's side in political and policy debates. In the first large scale empirical analysis of this operation, we show how to identify the secretive authors of these posts, the posts written by them, and their content. In contrast to prior claims, we show that the Chinese regime's strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. We discuss how these results may change our broader theoretical understanding of "common knowledge" and information control in authoritarian regimes.

Authors

• Jennifer Pan, Stanford U

• Gary King, Harvard U

• Margaret Roberts, U of California - San Diego