Political protests and the diversionary use of media: Evidence from China

Abstract

This research examines whether and to what extent political protests affect media coverage on external conflict in China for the purpose of diversion. Though there has been little evidence suggesting a diversionary use of force in contemporary China, we argue that, as the number of political protests increases, state-owned media are likely to expose the populace to media reports of external conflict as a way to divert public attention from domestic troubles/issues and instigate their nationalist sentiments. Our time-series analyses of China's weekly data from Global Times, one of the most influential Chinese tabloids, from February 2011 through December 2018 confirm this expectation. By weighting news reports based on the number of reposts of each report, which is significantly influenced by the 50c's activities, this study also accounts for the extent to which political protests affect the government's diversionary efforts.

Esta investigación analiza si, y en qué medida, las protestas políticas impactan en la cobertura sobre conflictos externos por parte de los medios de comunicación en China como estrategia de distracción. Si bien la evidencia que sugiere un uso de la fuerza diversionaria es escasa en la región de China contemporánea, sostenemos que, dado que la cantidad de protestas políticas está en aumento, los medios de comunicación propiedad del Estado tienden a exponer a la población a noticias que refieren a conflictos externos, como un medio para distraer la atención pública sobre los problemas y conflictos internos, a la vez que instigan sentimientos nacionalistas. Nuestros análisis cronológicos sobre datos semanales de China provenientes del Global Times, uno de los periódicos sensacionalistas más influyentes de China, desde febrero de 2011 hasta diciembre de 2018, confirman nuestras expectativas. Asimismo, este estudio, través de la ponderación de noticias realizada según la cantidad de republicaciones de cada noticia, que sufre una gran influencia de las actividades del partido de los 50 centavos, da cuenta de la medida en la cual las protestas políticas impactan en las iniciativas diversivas del gobierno.

Dans cet article, nous analysons les effets de la contestation politique sur la couverture médiatique des conflits internationaux en Chine à des fins de diversion. S’il existe peu d’éléments attestant d’un recours à la force à cet effet dans la Chine d’aujourd’hui, nous pensons que plus le nombre de manifestations politiques augmente, plus les médias d’État sont susceptibles d’exposer la population à des informations sur les conflits internationaux afin de détourner son attention des problèmes et troubles nationaux et de susciter un sentiment nationaliste. Notre analyse chronologique des parutions hebdomadaires entre février 2011 et décembre 2018 du Global Times, l’un des tabloïdes chinois les plus influents, confirme cette théorie. En pondérant les articles en fonction de leur nombre de partages, lequel dépend grandement de l’activité de l’Armée des 50 centimes, cette étude met également en évidence les effets de la contestation politique sur les manoeuvres de diversion du gouvernement chinois.

Keywords:

• Protests
• diversionary strategy
• media in China

Acknowledgments

This article was presented in the 53rd Annual Northeastern Political Science Association meeting and the University of Tennessee Global Security Workshop. We thank participants of these meetings for their helpful comments. Special thanks go to Dr. Chih-Jou (Jay) Chen for his generous sharing of the protest count data.

Notes

1 Exceptions include Gelpi (1997) and Sobek (2007). Sobek (2007) reports that domestic unrest drives oligarchies to initiate wars.

2 Astroturfers refer to those people/agencies that put fake grassroots efforts to influence public opinions through journal articles, news reports, or media comments that are released by the government for political purposes. They disguise themselves as private organizations, independent journalists, commentators, or citizens. For example, even though Global Times is a state-sponsored agency, it claims to be private and independent. Another example is 50c’s. They pretend to be the ordinary citizens and generate comments that serve the governments’ political purposes.

3 Nationalism and economic performance are two principal sources of legitimacy for the China’s leadership (Downs and Saunders 1999).

4 Wide media coverage of foreign conflict is observed distinctly when the Chinese government faces domestic troubles like public protests. In this example, public protests were on the rise. According to GDELT data, about 900 protest reports related to China occurred for the four weeks before the release of the article on the Swedish event, which was approximately 50 percent higher than the reported number of protests in the following month.

5 However, they also report that Chinese citizens’ disapproval of inaction increases when the government fails to take aggressive action after explicit threats to use force.

6 Davies (2002) finds that domestic nonviolent strife reduces the likelihood of state initiation of international conflict, whereas violent strife increases it.

7 One example is found in the case of the liberal Guangdong magazine Southern Weekly in 2013. When government censors forced the magazine to rewrite its New Year’s message from a call for reform to a compliment on the Communist Party, it triggered protests by the magazine and public, eventually resulting in a compromise between local propaganda officials and the magazine (Beach 2013)

8 It is possible that the Chinese government’s diversionary behavior might occur for preventive purposes before major protests emerge. To see if protests are preceded by diversionary behavior, we test our models by adding a future protest (t + 1) variable. This variable is statistically insignificant (not reported here to save space). Probably, this is because, if diversionary reports are designed to impede the onset of protests, we are unlikely to observe protests eventually.

9 The data collected by Zhang and Pan (2019) covers a period between January 1, 2010 and June 30, 2017, through data mining techniques. The major protests approximately account for 1.4% of all the protest events in their dataset.

10 The within-China agencies include Zhongguo Xinwenwang, Xinjingbao, Nanfang Ribao, Nanfang Zhoumo, Nanfang Dushibao, Huaxi Dushibao, Guangzhou Ribao, and so forth; the external agencies include The Central News Agency, Radio Free Asia, Boxun, and Dajiyuan.

11 The data contains some noises and systemic errors. To enhance the validity, we identify and exclude government-initiated protests against foreign targets and the protests that happened in Hong Kong.

12 This is probably because the official data on yearly unemployment rates released by the Chinese government are often manipulated and thus unreliable (Knight and Xue 2006; Xue and Zhong 2003).

13 We dropped the stock price and GDP growth variables in both stages. This is because of concerns about high correlations between these variables and CPI inflation. Nevertheless, there are virtually no substantive changes in the outcomes even with them in the models.

14 The results also indicate that an increasing number of diversionary reports is observed as a response to domestic protests when the level of economic growth is relatively high.