How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts

American Political Science Review (2017) 111, 3, 484–501 doi:10.1017/S0003055417000144 c American Political Science Association 2017 How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument GARY KING Harvard University JENNIFER PAN Stanford University MARGARET E. ROBERTS University of California, San Diego he 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 T real social media posts, as if they were the genuine opinions of ordinary people. Many academics, and most journalists and activists, claim that these so-called 50c party posts vociferously argue for the government’s side in political and policy debates. As we show, this is also true of most posts openly accused on social media of being 50c. Yet almost no systematic empirical evidence exists for this claim https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055417000144 . or, more importantly, for the Chinese regime’s strategic objective in pursuing this activity. 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. We estimate that the government fabricates and posts about 448 million social media comments a year. 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 show that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to distract the public and change the subject, as most of these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or other symbols of the regime. We discuss how these results fit with what is known about the Chinese censorship program and suggest how they may change our broader theoretical understanding of “common knowledge” and information control in authoritarian regimes. https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms INTRODUCTION they censor certain individual social media posts that have appeared on the web or filter them out before ocial media in China appears as vibrant and ex- appearing. In both cases, the censorship apparatus al- tensive as in any Western country, with more than lows a great deal of criticism of the regime, its officials, S 1,300 social media companies and websites, and and their policies (which can be useful information for millions of posts authored every day by people all over the central government in managing local leaders) but the country. At the same time, the Chinese regime im- stops discussions that can generate collective action on poses extensive and varied controls over of the entire the ground (King et al. 2013, 2014).1 system (Brady 2009; Cairns and Carlson 2016; Knockel According to numerous speculations by scholars, ac- et al. 2015; MacKinnon 2012;Ng2015; Shirk 2011; tivists, journalists, officials in other governments, and Stockmann 2013; Stockmann and Gallagher 2011; Yang participants in social media, the Chinese regime also 2009). Which social media companies are prevented conducts “astroturfing,” or what we might call reverse from operating in China is easy to see (the so-called censorship, surreptitiously posting large numbers of Great Firewall of China), and the scholarly literature , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at fabricated social media comments as if they were the now offers considerable evidence on how and why genuine opinions of ordinary Chinese people. The people hired for this purpose are known formally as Inter- Gary King is Albert J. Weatherhead III University Profes- net commentators (), although more widely sor, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, 1737 Cambridge as 50c party members (), so called because they St., Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138; GaryKing.org are rumored to be paid 50 cents (5 jiao, , or about ([email protected]). $0.08) to write and post each comment (Tong and Lei 28 Aug 2017 at 14:16:56 Jennifer Pan is Assistant Professor, Department of Communica- tion, 450 Serra Mall, Building 120, Stanford University, Stanford CA 2013). We show that this rumor turns out to be in- , on 94304; jenpan.com ([email protected]). correct; however, we adopt this widely used term to Margaret E. Roberts is Assistant Professor, Department of Po- denote social media comments posted at the direction litical Science, University of California, San Diego, Social Sciences or behest of the regime, as if they were the opinions of Building 301, 9500 Gilman Dr., #0521, La Jolla, CA 92093-0521; 2 MargaretRoberts.net ([email protected]). ordinary people. Harvard University Our thanks to Neel Guha, Peter Dyrud, Yingjie Fan, and many oth- . ers for superb research assistance; Danielle Allen, Peter Bol, Becky Fair, Chase Harrison, Iain Johnston, Franziska Keller, Blake Miller, 1 Although we make general statements about Chinese censorship, it Jean Oi, Samantha Ravich, Brandon Stewart, Daniela Stockmann, is important to note that censorship in China is by no means mono- Andy Walder, Yuhua Wang, Chaodan Zheng, and Yun Zhu for help- lithic in its operations or outcomes. Censorship is largely carried ful comments; and DARPA (contract W31P4Q-13-C-0055/983-3) out by Internet content providers, and regulations over the flow of and the National Science Foundation (grant 1500086) for research information continues to evolve. As a result, there is variation in the support. Authors are listed alphabetically. Data and information precise details of censorship in China by platform, geography, and necessary to replicate the results in this article appear in King et al. over time. (2017). 2 Thus, 50c party members are distinct from “volunteer 50c mem- Received: August 26, 2016; revised: November 6, 2016; accepted: bers” (; known as “bring your own grainers”), who express https://www.cambridge.org/core April 11, 2017. proregime or anti-Western sentiment online without being paid by 484 Downloaded from How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument The nearly unanimous view of journalists (and hu- show that almost none of the Chinese government’s man rights activists) is that 50c party posts strongly 50c party posts engage in debate or argument of any argue with and debate against those who criticize the kind. They do not step up to defend the government, government, its leaders, and their policies. This is also its leaders, and their policies from criticism, no matter the view of many scholarly publications discussing this how vitriolic; indeed, they seem to avoid controversial activity (and was our view as well prior to the re- issues entirely. Instead, most 50c posts are about cheer- search reported here). We systematically summarize leading and positive discussions of valence issues. We these views, including a quantitative analysis of social also detect a high level of coordination in the timing and media posts openly accused of being written by 50c content in these posts. A theory consistent with these party members. Unfortunately, until now, no method patterns is that the strategic objective of the regime is to has existed for detecting 50c party members, which distract and redirect public attention from discussions posts they write, their content, the size of the opera- or events with collective action potential. tion, or why they write them, and so the best anyone The theoretical implications of our findings are pre- could do was base claims on intuition, logic, occasional sented later in the article. We give a unified parsimo- anecdotes, rumors, and leaked government directives. nious summary of Chinese government internal infor- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055417000144 . In this article, we offer the first systematic empirical mation control efforts and show how these findings evidence for the content of 50c party posts, their au- may cause scholars to rethink the notion of “common thors, and the government’s strategic objectives.3 We knowledge” in theories of authoritarian politics more begin by analyzing an archive of emails leaked from the generally. Finally, we conclude and then give a sum- Internet Propaganda Office of Zhanggong, a district of mary of what we might have missed and how scholars Ganzhou City in Jiangxi Province. These emails give can follow up on this work.4 explicit details of the work of numerous 50c accounts in this district. Although in the public domain and re- WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW ported in the press (e.g., Henochowicz 2014; Sonnad 2014), the structure of the archive is complicated, too We summarize here views about the 50c party of (1) https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms large to understand by traditional qualitative meth- journalists, (2) academics, and (3) social media par- ods, and in formats (and attachments) far too diverse ticipants accusing others of being 50c party members. to make standard methods of automation feasible. As The dominant view of most is that 50c party members such, it has never before been systematically analyzed, engage in “hand-to-hand” verbal combat, making spe- and little of it has been explored. We have developed cific, directed arguments that support the government, an approach to analyze this dataset and have extracted its leaders, and their policies, and opposing arguments more than 43,000 known 50c party posts and their au- to the contrary; they do this by engaging in debate with thors from it. and criticism of China’s enemies, including those who We first characterize the patterns in these data via oppose it inside the country and from abroad. For (1) their network and time series structures. Then we sys- and (2) we offer brief literature reviews; for (3) we find tematically analyze the content of the 50c posts in our and analyze posts accused by others of being 50c.

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