https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2982-1032
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ABSTRACT
A 2016 review of literature about automation, algorithms and politics identified China as the foremost area in which further research was needed because of the size of its population, the potential for Chinese algorithmic manipulation in the politics of other countries, and the frequency of exportation of Chinese software and hardware. This paper contributes to the small body of knowledge on the first point (domestic automation and opinion manipulation) and presents the first piece of research into the second (international automation and opinion manipulation). Findings are based on an analysis of 1.5 million comments on official political information posts on Weibo and 1.1 million posts using hashtags associated with China and Chinese politics on Twitter. In line with previous research, little evidence of automation was found on Weibo. In contrast, a large amount of automation was found on Twitter. However, contrary to expectations and previous news reports, no evidence was found of pro-Chinese-state automation on Twitter. Automation on Twitter was associated with anti-Chinese-state perspectives and published in simplified Mandarin, presumably aimed at diasporic Chinese and mainland users who ‘jump the wall’ to access blocked platforms. These users come to Twitter seeking more diverse information and an online public sphere but instead they find an information environment in which a small number of anti-Chinese-state voices are attempting to use automation to dominate discourse. Our understanding of public conversation on Twitter in Mandarin is extremely limited and, thus, this paper advances the understanding of political communication on social media.
Acknowledgements
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Research Council.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Gillian Bolsover is a research associate at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Internet Institute. She completed her DPhil at the Internet Institute in 2017 and holds a dual MSc/MA in Global Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science and Fudan University in Shanghai, China. [Email: [email protected]].
Philip Howard is a Professor of Internet Studies and the Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute. He is the Principal Investigator of the Computational Propaganda research project that investigates how bots, algorithms and other forms of automation are used by political actors in countries around the world. [Email: [email protected]].
ORCID
Gillian Bolsover http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2982-1032
Philip Howard http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3380-821X
Notes
1 Weibo literally means microblog and several commercial microblogging platforms exist, including those of Sina and Tencent. However, Sina Weibo is the largest microblogging platform in China and is often simply referred to as Weibo. In line with this discourse, further references in this paper to Weibo (capitalized) should be understood as referring to the Sina Weibo platform.
2 The fact that 18 of the accounts had been deleted between data collection and the qualitative analysis phase suggests that these accounts, which were predominantly automated using custom scripts, were identified as bots and deleted by the platform.
3 Surprisingly, despite publishing in simplified Mandarin (used in mainland China) many of the display names of accounts in this group utilized traditional characters: 雲南日報 instead of 云南日报 and 中國新聞 instead of 中国新闻. This suggests that this group might be linked with Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau where traditional characters remain in use.
6 As of January 2018.
