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How Market Dynamics of Domestic and Foreign Social Media Firms Shape Strategies of Internet Censorship

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How Market Dynamics of Domestic and Foreign Social Media Firms Shape Strategies of Internet Censorship Problems of Post-Communism ISSN: 1075-8216 (Print) 1557-783X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mppc20 How Market Dynamics of Domestic and Foreign Social Media Firms Shape Strategies of Internet Censorship Jennifer Pan To cite this article: Jennifer Pan (2017) How Market Dynamics of Domestic and Foreign Social Media Firms Shape Strategies of Internet Censorship, Problems of Post-Communism, 64:3-4, 167-188, DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2016.1181525 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2016.1181525 Published online: 24 Aug 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 106 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=mppc20 Download by: [68.65.166.204] Date: 05 June 2017, At: 20:46 Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 64, nos. 3–4, 2017, 167–188 Copyright © 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1075-8216 (print)/1557-783X (online) DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2016.1181525 How Market Dynamics of Domestic and Foreign Social Media Firms Shape Strategies of Internet Censorship Jennifer Pan Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA There is ongoing debate over whether authoritarian regimes can maintain control over information given the rise of social media and the Internet. In this debate, China is often cited as a prime example of how authoritarian regimes can retain control, but to date, there has been limited research on whether China’s online censorship strategies can be replicated in other authoritarian regimes. This article shows that China’s ability to censor social media rests on the dominance of domestic firms in China’s market for Internet content. The absence of U.S. social media firms in China allows the Chinese government to engage in censorship through content removal, which can quickly and effectively suppress information. In contrast, for most other regimes, the market for social media is dominated by U.S. multinational firms, e.g., Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and in these contexts, content removal is an immense challenge. This article then examines the prospects of instituting content removal by developing domestic social media or importing Chinese platforms, and finds that most authoritarian regimes are unlikely to be able to duplicate China’s online censorship efforts. INTRODUCTION 2000; Earl and Kimport 2011;Howardetal.2011;Lotan et al. 2011). Indeed, the difficulty of controlling social Authoritarian regimes have gone to great lengths to media has led to speculation of how social media can impose control over traditional media—newspapers, tele- improve coordination in collective action against author- vision, radio—through government ownership of media itarian regimes and increase the reliability of information, outlets as well as methods ranging from bribes to especially information that is not accommodating toward 3 intimidation.1 These efforts to control traditional media the regime (Edmond 2013). The other side of the debate have been largely successful, even in a context of casts doubt over this outlook by arguing that most author- increased media commercialization.2 However, there is itarian regimes where Internet penetration has increased ongoing debate over the ability of authoritarian regimes have used technology and more traditional forms of to control the creation and dissemination of information repression, such as arrests, to counter the dangers posed on the Internet and social media platforms. One side of the by social media (Kalathil and Boas 2010;Pariser2011; debate argues that new media, in particular social media, MacKinnon 2012; Morozov 2012). disrupt the ability of authoritarian regimes to censor, and In this debate, the Chinese regime is often pointed to as one ultimately to maintain political power, because every indi- that has been successful thus far in controlling the dangers vidual can act as a broadcaster and the generation of posed by the Internet (Kalathil and Boas 2010; MacKinnon 4 information becomes too diffuse to control (Ferdinand 2012). However, we know little about whether the Chinese regime’s success in censorship is an outlier or foreshadows what other authoritarian regimes will also achieve. Research Address correspondence to Jennifer Pan, Assistant Professor, Department has not focused on whether the Chinese government’scensor- of Communication, Stanford University, Building 120, Room 110, 450 Serra ship activities can be replicated in other authoritarian regimes, Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-2050, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. or even in democratic regimes wanting to impose control over 168 PAN online content. This article moves a step forward in filling this Measuring the Social Media Landscape with Website gap by focusing on whether technical strategies of censoring Traffic social media employed by China are likely to be replicated by To compare China’s market for social media to those of other authoritarian regimes.5 other regimes, we use website traffic data from Alexa. Using a variety of quantitative and qualitative analyses, Alexa is a subsidiary of Amazon that gathers information this paper shows that China’s success in social media censor- on visitors to more than 30 million websites—for example, ship is inexorably tied to the dominance of domestic compa- how many people visit each site per day, how much time nies such as QQ, Weibo, and YouKu in China’smarketfor visitors spend on the website, how many pages visitors look social media content.6 This market dynamic allows the at before leaving, the demographics of these visitors. Alexa Chinese government to engage in censorship through content provides this information to businesses to enable them to removal that quickly and reliably eliminates content deemed compare the performance of their websites to other web- to be inappropriate, which in turn decreases the coordination sites of interest, such as those of competitors. potential of social media and covertly diminishes the reliabil- Using data from 96 countries, the social media land- ity of information. In contrast, for most other regimes, the scape of each country is assessed through the number of market for social media content is dominated by multinational social media firms among the 25 most trafficked sites for firms (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, Twitter), which prevents each country and the ownership of each social media firm.7 these regimes from engaging effectively in censorship Of the countries in the dataset, 25 are authoritarian regimes, through content removal. Instead, these regimes rely on con- and 71 are democratic.8 The traffic rankings used in this tent blocking, which though powerful is less effective than article are based on the average estimated unique daily content removal in reducing the potential of social media for visitors and pageviews per visitor between May 22, 2015, coordination and in diminishing the reliability of information. and June 23, 2015.9 The numbers of unique daily visitors With content blocking, content can still be accessed using and pageviews per visitor are based on the browsing data of circumvention technology. This article also shows that gov- individuals who have installed the Alexa toolbar as well as ernment protectionism in the form of long-term content block- other toolbars that track usage and report this data to ing of U.S. social media sites is not sufficient to explain the Alexa.10 More recently, Alexa has introduced a plugin success or failure of domestic social media firms. For most that web developers can install to provide more accurate countries that engage in long-term content blocking, U.S. data to Alexa. According to Alexa, millions of users have social media firms are still dominant. In the Chinese case installed the toolbar on over 25,000 different browser where long-term blocking of U.S. social media coincides extensions, and nearly 200,000 websites have installed the with dominant domestic social media firms, the success of Alexa plugin. Chinese firms against U.S. competitors often predated the Since Alexa relies on users to install their toolbar and imposition of content blocking. sites to voluntarily share their traffic data, there is likely to The article proceeds in four main sections. The first section be bias in the data. Use of Alexa data to make comparisons contrasts China’s market for social media and those of other between websites in terms of rank, the number of unique regimes by using data on website traffic. The second section visitors, and other statistics has been heavily criticized.11 demonstrates the difficulty for both autocratic and democratic Alexa acknowledges its data may overestimate or under- regimes to engage in content removal on these U.S. social estimate actual traffic given differences between its sample media platforms. The subsequent section examines the relation- of users and the set of all Internet users, and this is espe- ship between long-term content blocking (de facto protection- cially true of sites with low levels of traffic. Alexa states ism) and the rise of several Chinese Internet companies. The that global ranks of below 100,000 are rough estimates, and final section concludes by discussing the implications of the accuracy increases with higher ranks. Given the likely bias results. of Alexa data, the analysis here focuses only on the top 25 sites in each country, all of which are among the global top fi DOMINANCE OF DOMESTIC SOCIAL MEDIA IN 50,000 most traf cked sites. Alexa data are not used to CHINA make comparison between sites, but simply as a way to define the set of websites most likely to be among the most fi This section analyzes the ownership of top social media highly traf cked sites in each country. Even if the top 25 fi sites across a number of authoritarian and democratic sites are not in reality the 25 most highly traf cked sites in regimes.
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