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Microcensorship in China: Controlling the narrative or “letting a hundred flowers bloom”?

Jandréus, Fredrik LU (2013) STVK02 20131
Human Rights Studies
Department of Political Science
Abstract (Swedish)
This thesis looks at government censorship of Chinese social media, with a focus on the especially vibrant medium of micro-blogs – weibo 微博 in Chinese. It looks in detail at what kind of content is more likely to be censored, and how effective that censorship is. The approach is to conceptualise the Chinese online environment and the state-user interaction. Using these findings a hypothesis is then formulated, which suggests that the main focus of censorship of social media in China is on pre-emptive measures, directed against the organisation of social collective action online and offline. On the whole, the conclusion is that an online/offline dichotomy is too simple to describe the Chinese online environment. This hypothesis is then... (More)
This thesis looks at government censorship of Chinese social media, with a focus on the especially vibrant medium of micro-blogs – weibo 微博 in Chinese. It looks in detail at what kind of content is more likely to be censored, and how effective that censorship is. The approach is to conceptualise the Chinese online environment and the state-user interaction. Using these findings a hypothesis is then formulated, which suggests that the main focus of censorship of social media in China is on pre-emptive measures, directed against the organisation of social collective action online and offline. On the whole, the conclusion is that an online/offline dichotomy is too simple to describe the Chinese online environment. This hypothesis is then tried and proven valid by the method of a case study, where deleted posts from Sina Weibo collected on the database WeiboScope Search are analysed. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Jandréus, Fredrik LU
supervisor
organization
course
STVK02 20131
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
keywords
China, social media, weibo, censorship, WeiboScope Search, protest
language
English
id
3789294
date added to LUP
2013-09-02 09:17:47
date last changed
2014-09-04 08:27:50
@misc{3789294,
  abstract     = {{This thesis looks at government censorship of Chinese social media, with a focus on the especially vibrant medium of micro-blogs – weibo 微博 in Chinese. It looks in detail at what kind of content is more likely to be censored, and how effective that censorship is. The approach is to conceptualise the Chinese online environment and the state-user interaction. Using these findings a hypothesis is then formulated, which suggests that the main focus of censorship of social media in China is on pre-emptive measures, directed against the organisation of social collective action online and offline. On the whole, the conclusion is that an online/offline dichotomy is too simple to describe the Chinese online environment. This hypothesis is then tried and proven valid by the method of a case study, where deleted posts from Sina Weibo collected on the database WeiboScope Search are analysed.}},
  author       = {{Jandréus, Fredrik}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Microcensorship in China: Controlling the narrative or “letting a hundred flowers bloom”?}},
  year         = {{2013}},
}