Social media trolls as faux third-party agents of image repair: China’s disinformation campaign and statecraft in the Daryl Morey affair

References

• Al-Rawi, A., & Rahman, A. (2020). Manufacturing rage: The Russian Internet Research Agency’s political astroturfing on social media. First Monday, 25(9), https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v25i9.10801
   Google Scholar
• Benoit, W. L. (1995). Accounts, excuses, and apologies: A theory of image restoration strategies. Marcombo.
   Google Scholar
• Benoit, W. L. (2015a). Accounts, excuses, and apologies: Image repair theory and research (2nd ed.). State University of New York Press.
   Google Scholar
• Benoit, W. L. (2015b). Third party image repair. In Accounts, excuses, and apologies: Image repair theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 97–122). State University of New York Press.
   Google Scholar
• Berkowitz, P., Gjermano, G., Gomez, L., & Schafer, G. (2007). Brand China: Using the 2008 Olympic Games to enhance China's image. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 3(2), 164–178. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.pb.6000059
   Google Scholar
• Bie, B., & Billings, A. C. (2015). “Too good to be true?”: US and Chinese media coverage of Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen in the 2012 Olympic Games. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 50(7), 785–803. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690213495746
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Billings, A. C., MacArthur, P. J., Licen, S., & Wu, D. (2009). Superpowers on the Olympic basketball court: The United States versus China through four nationalistic lenses. International Journal of Sport Communication, 2(4), 380–397. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2.4.380
   Google Scholar
• Brown, N. A., & Billings, A. C. (2013). Sports fans as crisis communicators on social media websites. Public Relations Review, 39(1), 74–81. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.09.012
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Brown, N. A., Brown, K. A., & Billings, A. C. (2015). May no act of ours bring shame” fan-enacted crisis communication surrounding the Penn State sex abuse scandal. Communication and Sport, 3(3), 288–311.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Cha, V., & Lim, A. (2019). Flagrant foul: China’s predatory liberalism and the NBA. The Washington Quarterly, 42(4), 23–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2019.1694265
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Cohen, B., Wells, G., & McGinty, T. (2019, October 16). How one tweet turned pro-China trolls against the NBA. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-one-tweet-turned-pro-china-trolls-against-the-nba-11571238943?utm_source = newsletter&utm_medium = email&utm_campaign = newsletter_axioscodebook&stream = technology
   Google Scholar
• Cook, C. L., Karhulahti, V. M., Harrison, G., & Bowman, N. D. (2023). Trolligans: Conceptual links between trolling and hooliganism in sports and esports. Communication & Sport. Advance online publication, https://doi.org/10.1080/21674795231153005
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Cranmer, G. A., Boatwright, B., Mikkilineni, S., & Fontana, J. (2023). Everyone hates the NCAA: The role of identity in the evaluations of amateurism transgressions: A case study of the chase young loan scandal. Communication & Sport, 11(3), 634–657. https://doi.org/10.1177/21674795211009162
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• deLisle, J. (2020). Foreign policy through other means: Hard power, soft power, and China’s turn to political warfare to influence the United States. Orbis, 64(2), 174–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orbis.2020.02.004
   PubMedGoogle Scholar
• Drumheller, K., & Kinsky, E. S. (2021). Rushing to respond: Image reparation and dialectical tension in crisis communication in academia. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 49(4), 406–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2021.1896021
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Ehrett, C., Linvill, D. L., Smith, H., Warren, P. L., Bellamy, L., Moawad, M., … Moody, M. (2022). Inauthentic newsfeeds and agenda setting in a coordinated inauthentic information operation. Social Science Computer Review, 40(6), 1595–1613. https://doi.org/10.1177/08944393211019951
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Ferguson, D. P., Wallace, J. D., & Chandler, R. C. (2018). Hierarchical consistency of strategies in image repair theory: PR practitioners’ perceptions of effective and preferred crisis communication strategies. Journal of Public Relations Research, 30(5-6), 251–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/1062726X.2018.1545129
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• France-Presse, A. (2023, August 29). Meta fights sprawling Chinese spamouflage operation. Voa News. https://www.voanews.com/a/meta-fights-sprawling-chinese-spamouflage-operation/7246057.html
   Google Scholar
• Freelon, D., Bossetta, M., Wells, C., Lukito, J., Xia, Y., & Adams, K. (2020). Black trolls matter: Racial and ideological asymmetries in social media disinformation. Social Science Computer Review, 40(3), 560–578. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439320914853
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Goldstein, A. (2020). China’s grand strategy under Xi Jinping: Reassurance, reform, and resistance. International Security, 45(1), 164–201. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00383
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Guo, S., Billings, A. C., Brown, K. A., & Vincent, J. (2023). The Tweet heard round the world: Daryl Morey, the NBA, China, and attribution of responsibility. Communication & Sport, 11(1), 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167479520983254
   Google Scholar
• Hu, Y., & Pang, A. (2018). The indigenization of crisis response strategies in the context of China. Chinese Journal of Communication, 11(1), 105–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2017.1305978105
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Huang, F. (2013). Glocalisation of sport: The NBA’s diffusion in China. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 30(3), 267–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2012.760997
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Kagubare, I. (2022, October 26). Pro-Chinese disinformation group attempts to undermine US political system, influence voters: report. The Hill. https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/3704593-pro-chinese-disinformation-group-attempts-to-undermine-us-political-system-influence-voters-report/
   Google Scholar
• King, G., Pan, J., & Roberts, M. E. (2017). How the Chinese government fabricates social media posts for strategic distraction, not engaged argument. American Political Science Review, 111(3), 484–501. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055417000144
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Koch, N. (2013). Sport and soft authoritarian nation-building. Political Geography, 32(2013), 42–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2012.11.006
   Google Scholar
• Kurlantzick, J. (2022, December 5). China wants your attention please. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/05/chinese-state-media-beijing-xi-influence-tools-disinformation/
   Google Scholar
• Lee, A. (2020, June 8). K-pop fans are taking over ‘White Lives Matter’ and other anti-Black hashtags with memes and fancams of their favorite stars. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/04/us/kpop-bts-blackpink-fans-black-lives-matter-trnd/index.html
   Google Scholar
• Linvill, D. L., & Warren, P. L. (2020). Troll factories: Manufacturing specialized disinformation on Twitter. Political Communication, 37(4), 447–467. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1718257
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Linvill, D. L., & Warren, P. L. (2021, December 21). Understanding the pro-China propaganda and disinformation tool set in Xinjiang. Lawfare. https://www.lawfareblog.com/understanding-pro-china-propaganda-and-disinformation-tool-set-xinjiang
   Google Scholar
• Lukito, J. (2019). Coordinating a multi-platform disinformation campaign: Internet Research Agency activity on three U.S. social media platforms, 2015 to 2017. Political Communication, 37(2), 238–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1661889
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Mozur, P., Zhong, R., Krolik, A., & Aufrichtig, A. (2021, December 13). How Beijing influences the influencers. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/13/technology/china-propaganda-youtube-influencers.html
   Google Scholar
• Myers, S. L., Mozur, P., & Kao, J. (2022, February 18). Bots and fake accounts push China’s vision of winter Olympic wonderland. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/technology/china-olympics-propaganda.html
   Google Scholar
• Nekmat, E., Gower, K. K., & Ye, L. (2014). Status of image management research in public relations: A cross-discipline content analysis of studies published between 1991 and 2011. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 8(4), 276–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2014.907575
   Google Scholar
• Nguyen, D. Q., Vu, T., & Nguyen, A. T. (2020). BERTweet: A pre-trained language model for English Tweets. arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.10200.
   Google Scholar
• Nisbet, M. C. (2010). Knowledge into action: Framing the debates over climate change and poverty. In P. D'Angelo & J. A. Kuypers (Eds.), Doing news framing analysis (pp. 59–99). Routledge.
   Google Scholar
• O’Connell, W. D. (2022). Silencing the crowd: China, the NBA, and leveraging market size to export censorship. Review of International Political Economy, 29(4), 1112–1134. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2021.1905683
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Ostler, S. (2022, August 2). Benefits of NBA-China partnership? Well, there’s the money. San Francisco Chronicle. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/ostler/article/Benefits-of-NBA-China-partnership-Well-17346978.php#:~:text = The%20NBA%20makes%20roughly%20%245%20billion%20a%20year%20from%20China
   Google Scholar
• Paul, K. (2020, June 11). Twitter suspends Chinese operation pushing pro-Beijing coronavirus messages. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/china-twitter-disinformation-idCNL8N2DO5UP
   Google Scholar
• Pearce, K. E. (2015). Democratizing kompromat: The affordances of social media for state-sponsored harassment. Information, Communication & Society, 18(10), 1158–1174. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1021705
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Peijuan, C., Ting, L. P., & Pang, A. (2009). Managing a nation's image during crisis: A study of the Chinese government's image repair efforts in the “Made in China” controversy. Public Relations Review, 35(3), 213–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2009.05.015
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Powers, D. M. (2020). Evaluation: from precision, recall and F-measure to ROC, informedness, markedness and correlation. arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.16061.
   Google Scholar
• Ruwitch, J. (2020, July 30). Hong Kong police take steps to enforce controversial national security law. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/30/897066273/hong-kong-police-take-steps-to-enforce-controversial-national-security-law
   Google Scholar
• Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage.
   Google Scholar
• Sganga, N. (2022, October 26). China-linked influence campaign targeting U.S. midterms, security firm says. CBSNews. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dragonbridge-china-us-midterm-elections-influence-campaign-mandiant/
   Google Scholar
• Strick, B. (2021). Analysis of the pro-China propaganda network targeting international narratives. Centre for Information Resilience. https://www.info-res.org/post/revealed-coordinated-attempt-to-push-pro-china-anti-western-narratives-on-social-media
   Google Scholar
• Strudwicke, I. J., & Grant, W. J. (2020). #Junkscience: Investigating pseudoscience disinformation in the Russian Internet Research Agency tweets. Public Understanding of Science, 29(5), 459–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520935071
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• United States of America v. Internet Research Agency LLC. (2018). District of Columbia. https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download
   Google Scholar
• Vesselkov, A., Finley, B., & Vankka, J. (2020). Russian trolls speaking Russian: Regional Twitter operations and MH17. WebSci ‘20: Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference of Web Science, https://doi.org/10.1145/3394231.3397898
   Google Scholar
• Walter, D., Ophir, Y., & Jamieson, K. H. (2020). Russian Twitter accounts and the partisan polarization of vaccine discourse, 2015–2017. American Journal of Public Health, 110(5), 718–724. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305564
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Wei, F., Hong, F., & Zhouxiang, L. (2010). Chinese state sports policy: Pre-and post-Beijing 2008. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 27(14–15), 2380–2402. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2010.504583
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Wen, W. C., Yu, T. H., & Benoit, W. L. (2009). Our hero Wang can't be wrong! A case study of collectivistic image repair in Taiwan. Chinese Journal of Communication, 2(2), 174–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750902826707
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Wojnarowski, A., & Lowe, Z. (2020, October 28). NBA revenue for 2019–20 season dropped 10% to $8.3 billion, sources say. ESPN. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/30211678/nba-revenue-2019-20-season-dropped-10-83-billion-sources-say
   Google Scholar
• Wolf, T., Debut, L., Sanh, V., Chaumond, J., Delangue, C., Moi, A., Cistac, P., Rault, T., Louf, R., Funtowicz, M., & Davison, J. (2019). Huggingface’s transformers: State-of-the-art natural language processing. arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.03771.
   Google Scholar
• Youngmisuk, O. (2019, October 14). Lebron James: Daryl Morey was “misinformed” before sending Tweet about China and Hong Kong. ESPN. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27847951/daryl-morey-was-misinformed-sending-tweet-china-hong-kong
   Google Scholar
• Yu, T., & Wen, W. (2003). Crisis communication in Chinese culture: A case study in Taiwan. Asian Journal of Communication, 13(2), 50–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292980309364838
   Google Scholar
• Zannettou, S., Caulfield, T., DeCristofaro, E., Sirivianos, M., Stringhini, G., & Blackburn, J. (2019). Disinformation warfare: Understanding state-sponsored trolls on Twitter and their influence on the web. In L. Liu and R. White (Eds.), Companion proceedings of the 2019 world wide web conference (pp. 218–226). Association for Computing Machinery.
   Google Scholar
• Zhang, A., & Cave, D. (2022, June 3). Smart Asian women are the new targets of CCP global online repression. The Strategist. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/smart-asian-women-are-the-new-targets-of-ccp-global-online-repression/
   Google Scholar
• Zhang, E., & Benoit, W. L. (2009). Former Minister Zhang’s discourse on SARS: Government's image restoration or destruction? Public Relations Review, 35(3), 240–246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2009.04.004
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar