Chinese social media as a dominated online public sphere: A case
study of the 18th National Congress of Communist Party of China on
Sina Weibo
Yanshuang Zhang
The University of Queensland, Australia
[email protected]
Abstract
The Internet has long been the focus of utopian arguments
proposing its democratic potential. Most recently, social media has
been proposed as facilitating the Arab Spring and other political
changes toward democratic ideals in authoritarian societies. While
many observers are fascinated by the revolutionary potential of
social media, others are skeptical of this excessive optimism. This
paper investigates the most significant Chinese political event of
2012, the 18th National Congress of Communist Party of China in
which Chinas new leadership was elected, through the twin lenses of
social media and traditional media. It empirically compares and
contrasts depictions of the event in the most popular Chinese
social media service, Sina Weibo, against those from the most
circulated traditional mass media outlets. Through a combination of
computational text analytics and qualitative content analysis, we
observe a remarkable topical similarity between the two media
spheres, albeit a distinctive narrative pattern and some subtle
resistance in Weibo posts. It is argued that, insofar as China
still retains a restrictive approach to press and internet freedom,
social media is more inclined to be dominated by traditional media
in framing certain major political events, where the mediasphere is
critically censored, and the public discourse heavily swayed by
institutional accounts representing the official orthodoxies. In
such circumstances, social medias purported power thus has a
substantial boundary that constrains itself from serving as an
obvious quasi-revolutionary facilitator of dramatic institutional
changes envisioned by Western commentators. The impact of social
media on Chinese society is, therefore, an extremely complex and
long term evolutionary issue.
Keywords: public sphere, social media, Weibo, leadership,
censorship, China
The conceptualization of Public Sphere is based on the ideas
expressed by Jrgen Habermas who uses this concept to refer to a
public space emerging in eighteen centurys Europe where private
people began to come together as a public and debate over social
issues of common concern, thus monitor the state authority through
informed and critical discourse (1989). Against the backdrop of the
new media environment, the concept of public sphere has been
revitalized as the philosophical background for a number of
electronic participation studies (Iosifidis, 2011; Roberts, 2009;
Sb, Rose, & Flak, 2008; Sanford, 2012; Scammell, 2000). The
public sphere draws attention to the intimate connection between a
web of free, informal personal communications and the foundations
of democratic society (Rheingold, 2008: 101) and the idea of public
sphere as a place for discursive debate thus can provide new media
researchers with a useful concept which helps explain the
significance of online discursive participation and civic
engagement.
Especially today as we are living in a global network society
(Castells, 2004) woven by all kinds of technologies with networking
features, new media and networks of publics have generated a global
networked public sphere and civil society (Castells, 2008;
Papacharissi, 2002). With the public sphere of traditional sense
settling in physical places in old days, the modern-day public
sphere has expanded through the networked publics.
Among others, social media can be viewed both as technology and
space for expanding and sustaining the existing networks that have
been established by Internet. Relying on its focus on sharing and
participation of an increasing number of populations could
encourage more citizens to participate, social media within the
Internet are seen as potential mediated publics where public
discourse takes place and public opinion as function of the public
discourse is facilitated. And many scholars have argued that such
networked public spheres are indeed emerging in social media
(Castells, 2008; Iosifidis, 2011; Knox, 2013; Mazali, 2011; Pannen,
2010).
Such a new concrete form of public sphere has been staying on
discussing and research agenda because on the one hand the new
media are still in an evolving process and new patterns of
communication in public course are just emerging one after another;
consequently on the other, a fast conclusion on their impact on
human society should be avoided. A long term examination of social
medias profound influence on different social structures and
political ecosystems remains yet to be done.
Bruns et al. (2011) argue that social media furnish platforms
for the emergence of publics in post-Habermasian sense and based on
this proposition the new empirical methods of social media can
reach beyond the political blogosphere. Via social media platforms
like Twitter, YouTube et cetera which contains interest-based
communities and support both interpersonal communication and public
discussion, the theoretical shift as well is realized from the
public sphere to affective and emergent publics.
Shirky (2011) also argues that empirical conclusion on the
subject is hard to draw due to the novelty and rareness of relevant
examples. The safest and most promising position may be social
media as a long-term tools can strengthen civil society and public
sphere, especially that they have the most dramatic effects in
states where a public sphere already constrains the actions of the
government (p. 30). Even the increased sophistication and force of
state reaction underline the basic point that social media alter
the dynamics of the public sphere. The state can only prevail by
reacting to citizens ability to be more publicly vocal and to
coordinate more rapidly and on a larger scale than before (Gladwell
& Shirky, 2013).
Among Chinese new media studies, a few earlier studies also
point out the potentiality of Chinese social media as an emerging
public sphere and its possible impact on Chinese society (Lu &
Qiu, 2013; Shen, 2011; X. Zhang, 2010; Zheng, 2012). Some show
social medias success in publicizing examples of government
malfeasance, official corruption and scandals (Hassid, 2012;
Sullivan, 2013; Wu, Hofman, Mason, & Watts, 2011). And some
examined particular local incidents where this online public sphere
played an important role in dispute settlement process and even
induced direct institutional changes (Bei, 2013; Ross, 2011;
Sullivan, 2013; Xu, 2011).
Since most existing studies focus on analysis of some particular
social issues where censorship failed to exert a pervasive
influence and social medias role was comparatively tangible for
evaluation, studies on political issues especially those associated
with the paramount rule of the Party are lacking due to practical
difficulties in collecting data and even publishing findings. Thus
questions may be raised: how social media depict political issues
in China? Does this online sphere exert an impact if any on public
opinion in such events? And, what can we expect from Chinese social
media in terms of its purported democratizing power from other
countries experience?
This paper is an attempt at this direction. By investigating
public discussions happening on social media around the paramount
event of the 18th National Congress of Communist Party of China
(hereinafter: 18th NCCPC) in November 2012, during which the
significant Chinese leadership transition occurred, the paper tries
to figure out how social media depicted this political event and
whether this online sphere induced any changes in decision-making
process.
At the time of writing, Sina Weibo, as the leading Chinese
microblogging service has over 500 million users within and outside
the territory, accounting for more than half of the Chinese
Internet population (XinxiShibao, 2013). Therefore, it is taken as
the main platform on which we carry out this study and generalize
our conclusions to draw further inferences for subsequent similar
studies.
Data and methods
This paper examines the public discourse surrounding the 18th
NCCPC which was convened in Beijing from November 8 to November 14,
2012. On this congress, Xi Jinping as the new General Secretary of
the Party, also the chairman of the Central Military Committee was
elected. He is also the de facto president of China. Besides, a new
politburo standing committee with seven seats was elected to take
charge of different areas of the state affairs.
Considering the significance of this congress, the Chinese
government initiated the most stringent censorship towards media
coverage especially on Internet. The microblogging service
providers also proactively set up stricter self-censorship
mechanism and deployed more personnel to regulate online speech.
Offline physical surveillance was also launched to complement the
authoritys censorship efforts. For this reason, a large proportion
of the microblogs about the event before November 2, 2012 were
blocked or deterred for public search. And there was also limit for
daily retrieval of historical posts, which was 1000 post at
most.
The timeframe of sampling is set between October 8 and November
21, at the time points when the national media began to preheat the
event and when the most media coverage began to shift to other
issues. A purposive sampling was conducted using the key term 18th
NCCPC on Weibos own search engine, and more than 5000 posts were
obtained based on the parameter of popularity. The search parameter
is a built-in feature of Weibo search; when it is defined as
searching by popularity, the most circulated posts would be shown
on top of the results and thus collecting this kind of posts could
ensure the representativeness of the popular posts. Then the
collected posts are pre-processed into appropriate format for
further text analysis. To gain a deeper understanding of the online
public discourse, the study also collected news articles from three
traditional media for comparison. They are Peoples Daily, Xinhua
News Agency and Southern Weekend which represent the most
circulated and influential national news outlets. Within the same
timeframe and same key word, a total of 2,804 news articles were
collected from the three news sources through Factiva and their
official web databases. The traditional media dataset was also
pre-processed into appropriate format for further analysis.
The methods employed in this study combine content analysis and
discourse analytical approaches to acquire a comprehensive
interpretation and understanding of the civil discourse in the
political event on Sina Weibo, and reflect how such civil
discourse, as the self-expression of people in lifeworld,
articulates their identity and concern, fostering dialogue between
and among various social and political actors of Chinese public
sphere.
Content analysis is a method in the social sciences for studying
the content of those types of empirical documentation that is
written texts and artefacts. Tipaldo (2013) defines content
analysis as a wide and heterogeneous set of manual or
computer-assisted techniques for contextualized interpretations of
documents produced by communication processes strictiore sensu (any
kind of text, written, iconic, multimedia, etc.) or signification
processes (traces and artefacts), having as an ultimate goal the
production of valid and trustworthy inferences. The core questions
of content analysis can be briefly put as who says what, to whom,
why, to what extent and with what effect? (Lasswell, 1948) Content
analysis is also perceived to make inferences by systematically
identifying specified characteristics of messages.
Content analysis can be operated both quantitatively and
qualitatively. In this study, both approaches will be used. Through
a systematic classification process of coding and identifying
themes or patterns assisted by computer, a subjective
interpretation of the content of the text data will be attempted to
make implications or inferences on the social phenomenon concerned.
To assist this process, a text analytics software, Leximancer, will
be employed to conduct analyses of the conceptual content of the
transcribed microblog posts.
Leximancer can be used to analyze the content of collections of
textual documents, and to visually display the extracted
information. The information is displayed by means of a conceptual
map that provides an overview of the material, representing the
main concepts contained within the text and how they are related
(Leximancer White Paper, 2010).
As a method for transforming lexical co-occurrence information
from natural language into semantic patterns in an unsupervised
manner, the Leximancer system involves two states of co-occurrence
information extraction: semantic and relational, each of which uses
a different algorithm that are statistical, but employing nonlinear
dynamics and machine learning (Smith, Humphreys & Jones,
2006).
In this study, a discourse is defined as a set of meaning as
well as social practice through which a group of people
communicates about a particular topic, and discourse analysis is
adopted as an analytical method to examine a set of selected social
media texts reporting on the content of civil discourse in the
online event, in particular pertaining to the sociocultural
practices in online public sphere. The social media discourse is of
the researchers particular interest not only because it is a rich
source of readily accessible data for research but also it can
reflect and influence the formation and discourse practices of
politics, culture and social life in a civil society. Therefore,
the analysis of such discourse ought to reveal the social action
shaped in a particular context through peoples discursive
participation in different domains of social life.
Discourse analysis has been used as a research methodology in a
variety of disciplines to understand a wide range of texts
including natural speech, professional documentation, political
rhetoric, interview or focus group material, internet
communication, journals and media. In the more socio-culturally
oriented areas such as media studies and cultural studies,
discourse is considered primarily in relation to social contexts of
language use, while in linguistics discourse tends to focus more on
language and its use (Garret & Bell, 1998). Among a variety of
discourse analytical approaches, Fairclough (1995) straddles both
the linguistic analysis and context analysis, which not only
includes detailed attention to language and texture but also be
mapped on to analysis of the institutional and wider sociocultural
context of media practices. So examining the media discourse should
be recognized as an important element within research on
contemporary process of social and cultural change.
To distinguish itself from sociolinguistic approach to media
discourse, however, this research is primarily focused on the macro
aspects of a discourse, which means, the external social practices
acting on or relating to the discourse, and how the discourse
exerts influence if any on the social phenomenon under study. If
the sociolinguistic approaches can be viewed as looking inward at
text to reveal the linguistic and discoursal nature of a social
practice, then the discourse analytic approach employed by this
research is doing otherwise by looking at how the social context is
projected in civil discourse and what further social implications
might be inferred from the interaction between the two.
Its worth adding that a participant observation was also
involved in this study so that the analysis started even prior the
data collection and lasted throughout. The researcher observed and
sometimes participated in the dynamic interaction in online public
sphere, to obtain a better understanding of the issue of concern
and its associated bigger picture of socio-political conditions,
and to maintain a larger perspective on the research.
Findings
1. Similarity of topics in two spheres
20
Traditional mediaNote: indicates a matching relation between
Weibo concepts and traditional media conceptsSina Weibo
ConceptWeightConceptWeight
development38% 18th NCCPC51%
Party24% Party18%
Socialism21% People10%
people16%Celebration9%
Chinese16%Election7%
building16% representatives7%
18th NCCPC15% China7%
scientific14% Report6%
economic13% Beijing5%
reform13%Security4%
system12% Public4%
promote12%Police4%
social11% Reform4%
Society10% Social3%
Improve10%Victory3%
China10% Political3%
Report9%Market3%
Construction9% System3%
Important9% Economic3%
Road8%Reporters3%
Rural8% Country3%
Income8% Important2%
Growth7% National2%
World6% Leadership2%
Political6%Policy2%
Cultural6% Government2%
national6% society2%
Country6%Future2%
Public5% Congress2%
Leadership5% World2%
innovation5%Stability2%
government5% Road2%
Beijing5% Reporters2%
representatives4% construction1%
Achievements4% power1%
Economy4% Cultural1%
International4% Economy1%
power4%Corruption1%
Table 1 Main concepts emerging from traditional media and Sina
Weibo
Table 1 captures a snapshot of main themes and concepts that
emerged from legacy media and Weibo, with their top concepts listed
alongside correspondingly. A remarkable topical similarity to
legacy media public sphere was observed in the online public
sphere. Although the proportion of each concept to its context
blocks in two public spheres show their different focuses and
topical density, still four fifth of Weibo concepts are aligned
with those of the traditional media in a computational sense,
regardless of their specific meanings in respective contexts.
We further looked into the thousands of Weibo posts and found,
Weibo mainly focuses on conveying basic informational messages
about this event without much deep inquiry into the specific
agendas and matters of concerns. Such concepts account for a large
proportion of the total topics we found in online public
discussion.
For example, Party indicates the caller of this congress;
Beijing is the location where this event occurred; the
representatives of CPCs Central Committee are the attendees;
leadership transition is the main purpose of this congress; while
in all the hype of celebrating, this most significant event of the
Party was also subject to the highest-level security, of which the
heavy coverage implied a deterrent to potential threats. In a word,
a large proportion of users tended to talk broadly about the basic
information of the event without much inquiry into specific issues
on the Congress agenda. Only a small fraction (weight3%) touched a
broader range of topics which also well matched the traditional
media coverage.
Apart from such basic information, a more profound and
comprehensive elaboration of specific issues around key topics was
observed in traditional medias news articles. Especially with the
approaching of the Congress, the sampled legacy media proceeded to
conduct large amount of focused discussions about some key topics
such as Socialism, scientific development, economy, system, reform
and so on from perspectives of national policy and public
management. The hype of news coverage lasted for a considerable
time period (more than 3 months).
For example, the focused discussion was closely around the key
topic development. To concretize this broad topic, topics on
reforming systems, promoting innovation in science, culture and so
on were discussed. All these aspects would contribute to
comprehensive development of the society and further consolidate
Chinese socialist construction. Additionally, internal issues and
external affairs were also articulated. For internal issues,
economy, technology, public management, education, rural
development especially the migrants livelihood were all critical
issues China is confronting as frequently discussed in the public
discourse of traditional media; for external affairs, how to keep a
good relationship with other countries in order to promote
international cooperation would be the focus of foreign policies of
the new Chinese government.
In conclusion, collectively the Weibo posts harvested and
analyzed in this sample seemed to be rather similar to mainstream
traditional news reporting than harsh and hostile projections of
criticism and dissidence that have been recorded elsewhere (Havel,
1975; Ji, 2012; Yeo & Li, 2012). The result may be partly
attributed to the analytic approach adopted in this research which
attempted to make sense of a larger text body through qualitative
analysis software. Yet the result as a whole gives a general,
rational conceptualization of what kind of discussions were
prominently occurring on Weibo and what an ordinary user would be
likely find about the 18th NCCPC on this online sphere.
2. Institutional users as dominants
We further examined all the collected utterances that occurred
around the topic of this political event, and found that, nearly
80.6% were contributed by individual users (including verified
individual users), and 19.4% by verified institutional users.
According to Weibos verification program, verified users are mainly
composed of known people and organizations. In the sampling it was
observed that most institutional actors were either governmental
bodies or traditional media groups.
Although the verified users only contributed a comparatively
small proportion of the discussion about the event, they were
actually the most influential actors on Weibo because of their
celebrity effect on millions of followers. Their content, usually
well organized and clearly stated, had virtually generated a skewed
topical distribution with a long tail which was composed of the
large bulk of fragmentized, unsystematic content produced by
individual users (see Fig.1).
Fig.1 Concept distribution on Sina Weibo
One indicator of the most influential posts is the forward
number which indicates how many times the original posts are
forwarded by the users followers and non-followers. The more
forwards, the more people the post would exponentially reach, and
the more influence the post might have exerted on the public
sphere.
For example, institutional weibo user Headlines, the official
account of a Sina news service with about 18 million followers,
posted a weibo on November 8, 2012 as follows:
[CPC declares to build socialism with Chinese characteristics on
five fronts] The 18th NCCPC opened today declares to promote
eco-civilization equally with economics, politics, culture and
society construction. This is a new idea in the 18th NCCPC report.
Experts claim that CPCs unprecedentedly emphasizing
eco-civilization will make a big difference to both China and the
whole world. [See more: http://t.cn/zjvoBoH]The post was forwarded
by 976 times, and would theoretically reach more than 19 million
weibo users through more than four penetration levels, as indicated
by WeiboReach-a weibo analytical tool. Most forwards occurred in
the first following hour, and at the first penetration level (see
Fig.2).
Fig2. Penetration path and levels
Table 2 sampled the most circulated 1000 posts on November 9,
2012, which was the second day of the Congress session, and
calculated the forward frequency of main weibo users. The result
shows that the top addressors of the day were all institutional
actors, including the Partys leading mouthpieces and other media
outlets. It is worth noting here that Sina news and Sina video are
two internet services provided by Sina.com.cn, which is also the
service provider of Sina Weibo- the microblogging platform sampled
and examined by this study. The website proactively provided large
amount of information in concert with mouthpieces headlines during
the event.
No.User nameForward frequencyUser category
1@Caijing25202The official account of a news group
2@Headlines21059The official account of Sina news service
3@PeoplesDaily9036The official account of the State newspaper,
Peoples Daily
4@SouthernMetropolisDaily4235The official account of a Guangzhou
based local newspaper, Southern Metropolis Daily
5@XinhuaNewsAgency@XinhuaViewpoints2385The official accounts of
the State news agency, Xinhua News Agency and its affiliated
column, Xinhua Viewpoints
6@SinaVideo1320The official account of Sina video service
7individual users 425including verified and unverified users
8Other institutional users420including ordinary organizations as
well as the Partys grassroots departments
Table 2 Main user accounts of the most circulated 1000 posts on
November 9, 2012
In content, many Weibo posts conveniently fed off traditional
medias editorials or news articles. Taking one post released by
institutional user Headlines, the representative Weibo account of
Sinas news service, on October 1, 2012:[Peoples Daily Editorial
points out Chinas modernization cause is at an extremely important
point in history] Today Peoples Daily published an editorial under
the title of Advance along the Chinese Path that is Brimming with
Hope. Looking back at the development China has made in the past
decade since the 16th NCCPC, the article pointed out Chinas
modernization cause is at an extremely important point in history.
We shall seize opportunities to push the cause and proceed on the
hopeful Chinese way, to welcome the convening of the 18th NCCPC
with excellent performance. http://t.cn/zlcYPiKThe content of the
post was mainly an excerpt from Peoples Daily editorial (see
Fig.3), and the hyperlink in the post would redirect to a reprinted
version of the editorial by Xinhua News Agency. In this way, Weibo
and the Partys two leading mouthpieces were highly synchronized,
through hyperlink and media reprinting, forming an interrelated
topical network. Social media genuinely became an extension of the
traditional media in terms of both the content and influence.
Fig.3 Screenshot of Peoples Daily Editorial on October 1,
2012
This reciprocity can be observed in a large number of posts
published by institutional Weibo users, especially those official
accounts of governmental organizations at all levels. Besides the
most authoritative national media like Peoples Daily and Xinhua
News Agency, the Partys other local media outlets were also
frequently quoted as news sources in these users posts. Such
institutional actors, including news groups, government sectors and
organizations et cetera, with an attribute of informants or
quasi-propaganda have actually dominated the public discourse on
social media. And the symphony of social media and legacy media
thus play up a strong spin doctoring in both public spheres.
In sharp contrast, most ordinary individual users posts, either
reposting institutional users content or describing their personal
experience associated with the event, tended to be overwhelmed by
the flood of the uniform information disseminated by institutional
users, and therefore presented a relatively weak public opinion
field.
This phenomenon further confirms the Matthew effect, i.e., the
rich get richer and 80/20 rule, which widely exists in various
areas including online discussion where popular participants will
get more attractive in a growing conversation network (Castells,
2008; Castells & Cardoso, 2006; Sb, Rose, & Nyvang, 2009).
Through a study of Twitter discussion, Wu et al. (2004) also find
that elite users usually dominate the major attentions albeit they
compromise only a minor proportion of the user population. The same
also applies to Weibo and particularly in this case study the
discussion dominators were elite institutional and governmental
users.
3. Agenda setting function
Agenda setting is about the effect and influence of mass
communication. It specifies the practice that mass media pick out
important aspects of the reality according to their own values and
principles, process these facts and then report them to the
audience following a certain structure and procedure (Knox, 2013).
In this case study, by highlighting some key topics, the
traditional media played a focused role as agenda setter, keeping
impressing and influencing the audience through repeated and
comprehensive coverage pre, during and post the congress. With
clear intent of propaganda, the sampled traditional media had
comprehensively reported every aspects of the event in a formal,
elaborative way and thus generated a rational, systematic
agenda-setting coverage.
Fig.4 traces the evolutionary trends of 18th NCCPC event on
legacy media over a time series of 2 months. The trend map shows a
steady distribution curve throughout, with flat curves on weekdays
and down valleys on weekends, except the two prominent spikes at
the beginning and the end of the Congress. This indicates an
explicit agenda setting effort of traditional media.
Fig.4 Event trend on traditional media
As a matter of fact, such kind of propagandist agenda setting
has become the Party medias consistent practices for major
political events in China. It usually commences more than one month
before the event, and will follow up for more than one month after.
Also, by further examining the content of the traditional media, it
can be well observed that the traditional media tend to discuss
issues at national level especially those closely associated with
the Partys rule and national policies.
Table 3 examines the concepts emerging from news articles of the
three periods and the top ten concepts were extracted from the
texts respectively. The table shows that there was little
difference among key topics emerging from legacy medias pre, during
and post- Congress coverage, and suggested a monolithic block of
propaganda with shocking consistency and agenda setting effort.
Time periodTop 10 concepts
Pre-Congress(Oct.8- Nov.7)development, Party, people, social,
reform, economy, China, construction, scientific, system
During Congress(Nov.8-Nov.14)development, Socialism,
characteristics, China, people, Party, economy, reform, system,
scientific
Post-Congress(Nov.15-Dec.8)development, Socialism, Party, China,
people, scientific, economy, social, report, system
Table 3 Top 10 concepts emerging from legacy medias periodic
coverage
For example, a most circulated weibo on November 26, 2012 was
posted by institutional user SouthernMetropolisDaily, the official
account of the newspaper, Southern Metropolis Daily: [CCDI: In no
circumstances should corrupted officials be allowed to have hiding
places within the Party] CCDI has released a notification
requesting all discipline inspection and supervision organs to
learn the essence of 18th NCCPC. It claims to have a stronger
resolution and take greater efforts to combat corruption, and to
establish a sound system to punish and prevent corruption. Anyone
violating Party disciplines and state laws will be seriously dealt
with in line with laws, with zero tolerance. There is no place for
corrupt figures to hide away within the Party. Xinhua News Agency
http://t.cn/zjGLRwaInstitutional user PeoplesDaily, the official
account of the State paper, Peoples Daily posted on November 26,
2012:[Hello Tomorrow] There is no place for corrupt figures to hide
away within the Party. The stern claim of CCDI shows Chinese people
the new leaderships clear standpoint and strong resolution. When
the Party echoes with the will of people to declare war to
corruption, we should also amend the inspection systems to make
sure the power is carried out under the sun, and to create smooth
channels for public opinions. Strong resolution is valuable, but a
perfect system values more.Institutional user SouthReviews, the
official account of the magazine, South Reviews posted on November
27, 2012:[Use democracy and the rule of law to prevent power abuse]
Corruption results essentially from the abuse of power. How to bind
power is no more than democracy and the rule of law. It can be
achieved through the power structure adjustment and more political
engagement of citizens. Only generated as well as inspected and
constrained by the way of democracy and the rule of law, can power
abuse really be prevented.All the exemplifying posts listed above,
their efforts in disseminating information or initiating discussion
about anti-corruption, though from different interpretive
perspectives, had exactly extended the official discourse from
traditional media to social media. Since the Partys mouthpieces
were the only legitimate news sources about such political events
given the governments particular press regulation, their social
media surrogates, thus, became the biggest spin doctors in online
public sphere. Ordinary citizens just had no other way to get more
diversified information. With the concerted efforts of legacy media
and social media, a strong, unified opinion field was being formed
in both mediaspheres.
By contrast, social media users tend to use a more personalized
expression to convey quite emotional messages, generating a
redundant, fragmentized information flux, and thus collectively
formed an inconsistent, weak public discourse in this event, as
will further be unpacked in section 4.2. What is worse, due to CPCs
unwavering censorship effort combined with ruthless offline
stability-maintaining measures, such as throwing irresponsible
netizens to jail, most social media users had enough awareness to
self-censor their own speech lest they invite unpleasant
trouble.
Fig.5 18th NCCPCs Weibo Trend
Fig.5 traces the evolutionary trends of 18th NCCPC event on
Weibo over a time series of 2 months, showing three evident spikes
of online public discussion before (spike A) and after (spike B and
C) the congress. The curve, with remarkable ups and downs, implies
an inconsistent, fragmentized attention from Weibo users to this
event.
The first sharp spike of discussion of the event on Weibo
appeared expectantly before the event on November 6, but what is
odd is that immediately after that day the curve went to a
downswing and remained unreasonably low throughout the Congress
(from November 8 to November 14), indicating an evident political
apathy or withdrawal behavior of ordinary citizens.
This result, tallies well with the conclusion of previous
studies. Du et al. (2013) conduct a comprehensive survey on topics
Chinese netizens are concerned with, and find that the public
showed a remarkable apathy to serious political topics, especially
news about those significant political conferences or events. They
further tentatively point out the main reasons behind this apathy
is three-folded: the coverage is fairly propagandist and monolithic
given the news sources of such political events are mostly the
Partys media outlets: the stereotyped description and
depersonalization of officials as well as their achievements fails
to attract the audience; most importantly, the stringently censored
political environment keeps the public from partaking in open
discussion of political issues.
The other two spikes, B and C were provoked directly by the cull
of several corrupted officials in the anti-corruption actions
initiated by the new leadership immediately after the Congress,
projecting Chinese peoples real concerns in public affairs which
are closely associated with their daily lives. That is to say,
compared with traditional medias organized coverage, Weibo was more
instant and spontaneous in responding to issues of ordinary peoples
real concerns, showing in general an ever-changing, inconsistent
public discourse.
This kind of public discourse intrigued by scandalous affairs,
often nuanced and full of vitriolic sentiment, may have a
non-trivial impact on the structural features of online public
discussion and individual behavior, and further even on the
political process itself. More recent Weibo cases have shown
success in publicizing examples of government malfeasance, official
corruption and scandals (Hassid, 2012; Sullivan, 2013; Wu et al.,
2011). However, among them none were trying to touch the boundary
of the Partys rule. Especially in the most significant congress
which signifies the core of the Partys power, even the most deviant
Weibo dared not go beyond the prescribed limit but followed the
universal theme, or silenced itself.
To summarize, from the aforementioned findings, we can clearly
see a strong media sphere constructed by the traditional media for
this political event, which spared no effort to conduct a
monolithic, consistent and dense propaganda. The online public
sphere shaped by social media, however, was weak, fragmentized, and
inconsistent; most importantly, it is a public sphere dominated by
institutional users- the avatars of traditional media group, and
governmental organs official accounts which in a sense just attempt
to extend the traditional medias influence and mainstream
discourse. And in this case study, this sphere was on the whole no
different from the official discourse as the involved traditional
media and their Weibo avatars were all under the authority of CPC
propaganda czars.
Discussion
According to Joseph (2012), the process of hashtagging is one
way for Twitter to realize the notion of a vernacular public
sphere. This function has improved the searchability of the topic,
and further blurred the lines between institutional and
non-institutional discourses. However, a large fraction of users on
Sina Weibo is observed not to make use of hashtags (Gao, Abel,
Houben, & Yu, 2012) which implies that hashtag-based user
profiles or topic modeling based on hashtags, as proposed by Romero
et al. (2011, cited by Gao et al.) seem not to be appropriate on
Sina Weibo. They further argue it is due to the high power distance
(Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010) in Chinas society that
Chinese users are less eager to disclose information using hashtags
to ensure their posts appear in the public discussion. It can also
be implied in another sense that the less use of hashtags can help
Chinese users to avoid their posts being censored in some sensitive
occasions.
According to Hofstedes cultural dimensions theory, power
distance is the extent to which the less powerful members of
organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect
that distributed unequally (Hofstede, 1991, p. 28; Hofstede &
Peterson, 2000, p. 401). Cultures that endorse low power distance
expect and accept power relations that are more consultative or
democratic. People relate to one another more as equals regardless
of status, and are more comfortable with and demand the right to
contribute to and criticize the decision- making of the rulers. By
contrast, in a high power distance society like China in this case,
less powerful are in relations with power that are more autocratic
and paternalistic. People do not attribute much impact to their
individual activities on the formidable system especially when
regarding the rulers internal affairs.
This can well explain Chinese internet users apathy during the
Partys Congress because ordinary citizens believe their posts
cannot make a difference in the supreme Party-related issues,
especially when positioned in a dominated public sphere by
institutional actors and traditional media.
Rather than the political event itself, people are more
concerned about the substantial impact of the event on matters of
their interests, including their expectation of the new government
before the event, the realization of promises made by new leaders
and the changes of the status quo after the event, which would have
the direct bearing on the authority of the new leadership and the
legitimacy of its ruling. The immediate anti-corruption action
initiated after the event by the government has thus provoked
greater repercussion around the public sphere, and formed prominent
spikes in public sphere, as exactly indicated in the social medias
trend map.
In the public sphere constructed by the legacy media, more often
than not the Partys mouthpieces dominate the public opinion. They
enter the discourse vacuum temporarily generated by the top-down
censorship and medias self-censorship during politically sensitive
events, and play the role of spin doctors. When positive coverage
will be broadcasted via traditional media like the Partys outlets
anyway, censorship becomes bluntly useful to prevent political
instability caused by anticipated online criticisms.
Weibo censorship has been the subject of a number of previous
studies. By performing a statistical analysis of deleted posts,
Bamman et al. (2012) find that the presence of some sensitive terms
indicates a higher probability of the deletion of a post. King et
al. (1997) analyze content from multiple sources including
microblogs and summarize categories of content the censors focus
on. Zhu et al. (2013) examine the velocity of microblog post
deletions on Sina Weibo which shows the topics where mass removal
happens the fastest are those that combine events that are hot
topics on Weibo as a whole with themes common to sensitive posts,
for instance, including Beijing, government, and policeman et
cetera.
Therefore, under such a rigorous regulatory environment and
growth of mainstream alternatives ready to accept required
censorship, Weibo, occasionally exhibiting a power that ever
changed the course of events and even the local democratic
landscape, has its own intrinsic limitations and resulted in a
highly unusual microblogging environment which is much distinctive
from that of democratic societies.
On the one hand, popular internet events are attributed to a
bourgeoning online public sphere which accommodates information
exchange, discursive participation and online mobilization. Via
this platform Chinese netizens have occasionally played the role of
agenda setter in a wide range of social issues, of which some did
exert an impact on the governments policy making process. Chinese
peoples awareness has also been well awakened and raised in civil
rights, freedom of speech and democracy.
On the other, it should be acknowledged that the impact of such
online events on the Chinese society at large is far from clear or
straightforward (Jiang, 2010). Among a variety of issues sweeping
the Internet and social media, very few could rise to public view
and go further to create a considerable social impact, not to
mention any substantial institutional change. Bearing firmly in
mind the risk of overtly challenging the state power, most Chinese
netizens are only seeking online for a vent of their
dissatisfaction and indignation with the status quo. Their
fragmentized attention to a certain public issue could rarely last
over time, especially when the increasing number of spectacular
public events in online public sphere might even cause the
emotional fatigue of those uninvolved gawkers.
While social media have amplified ordinary peoples voices and
formed a powerful public opinion field, Chinese government has also
been taking advantage of these new tools to strengthen filtering,
censorship, and regulatory capabilities; more importantly, it has
been arguably successful in gaining popular compliance and
cementing its political rule by building and promoting state
legitimacy in economy, nationalism, ideology, culture and
governance.
Thus the complexity of this online public sphere cannot be
reduced to a simple zero-sum game between the state and emerging
civil society (Pei, 2010). Taking the 18th NCCPC, in sharp contrast
with the loose discussion threads of ordinary peoples unspoken
revolt on Weibo, the thousands of governmental users had virtually
played as spin doctors in the public sphere with systematic,
overwhelming information feeding, which was closely aligned with
that of the CPCs mouthpieces.
Hence, while some researchers optimistically argue Chinese
social media has great potential to facilitate public discussions
and debates, cultivate civic awareness and consciousness, reframe
the social structure and ultimately bring about social changes, we
should acknowledge that without diversified implementation ways of
democracy and political deliberation embedded in the
socio-political structures, Chinese social medias
quasi-revolutionary power and democratic notion would still be
constrained to a limited impact, especially given the fact the new
leadership tends to adopt a more cautious attitude to social media
as well as more stringent internet management policies.
Limitation
Since Sina Weibos Application Programing Interface (API) is not
totally open to developers, currently there is no efficient way to
get access to the whole database of Weibo. Moreover, there is also
limitation for daily retrieval of Weibo post search that is 1000 at
most. So for individual researchers, manually harvesting data on
the basis of certain terms becomes the only workable way to perform
data collection.
The limitation of the study, thus mainly lies in the smaller
data size, which apparently cannot serve as a sufficient database
if we intend to do a big data type study on this issue.
Consequently the study can only focus on one aspect of the whole
puzzle of online public sphere facilitated by Weibo, which is by
and large determined by the available posts the researcher could
obtain.
The stringent censorship during the event is also an
uncontrollable restricting factor which hinders the researcher to
normally obtain posts of particular time period, not to mention get
access to those inharmonious posts. The metadata analyzed in this
study were substantially pre-filtered, falling short of more
diversified traits. But in turn this exactly composes one unique
characteristic of Chinese social media as a surveilled online
public sphere.
That being said, within a smaller data set a topical network can
yet be well observed and a more detailed qualitative exploration of
the data can also be provided, through a multi-process, mixed
method of approach combining relevant keywords extraction, concept
visualization and content analysis. The findings unveiled by the
study can also appropriately explain part of the critical facts in
Chinese social medias landscape. With the same effort, the
subsequent researches could further explore other aspects of this
online public sphere as well as its impact on social issues based
on different datasets.
Conclusion
Since social media began to rage its popularity in the
worldwide, extensive studies have been conducted to explore its
potentiality as technology and space for expanding and sustaining a
mediated public sphere where public discourse takes place and
public opinion as function of the public discourse is facilitated.
Particularly after Twitter revolution that occurred in some less
free regimes, researchers have been fascinated by its
quasi-revolutionary power of causing fundamental changes.
When it comes to China, there is also shared understanding that
the nation is in the midst of a microblog movement. Although quite
a few Anglophone services like Twitter and Facebook are blocked by
the Great Firewall of China, the diligent local companies developed
their own social networking services which have been launching a
process of empowering individuals as well as their civic awakening
since then. Over several years Chinese ordinary peoples daily lives
have been reshaped by social media in a way that free expression of
their common concern about social issues and even online
large-scale mobilizations become possible.
On one hand China enjoys great benefits from the prosperous
internet industry since the government has full control of web
servers and internet service authorization. On the other hand,
considering the lessons those involved governments all learned from
Twitter-assisted revolutions, Chinese government has intentionally
posed a more rigorous censorship towards the new media, and
accordingly changed their political practices in response to
Chinese citizens constant resistance. Many previous events have
witnessed the governments such efforts in constraining any new
medias subversive forces, as well as a growing bureaucratic
consensus that favors a much tighter censorship (Jiang, 2010; Y.
Zhang, 2013).
Given this backdrop, this study chose a paramount political
event in China-the 18th NCCPC where the new Chinese leadership was
elected into power and its new ruling guidelines were declared, and
conducted a qualitative content analysis of public discussions
happening both on social media and traditional media around the
event. The comparison between the two indicates a legacy
media-dominant online public sphere was emerging around this topic
due to the highest level censorship, albeit a marginalized micro
political resistance among Chinese netizens by the way of keeping
silence could still be observed throughout.
Therefore, despite the existing studies have showcased Chinese
social medias powerful agenda setting and catalyst effect in some
given issues, the disparate dynamics of the this political event
has further revelation about boundaries of social media's so called
revolutionary power under an authoritarian socio-political system.
With regards to paramount political issues and many other
Party-related issues, ordinary peoples voices could not genuinely
make much difference through this online sphere, albeit it might
have a profound effect on Chinese citizens psyche and awareness in
the long term. Social medias constrained influence on limited
political affairs has added complexity to the dynamics of the
state, public sphere and new technologies, as well as the
subsequent Chinese social media studies.
References
Bamman, D., OConnor, B., & Smith, N. (2012). Censorship and
deletion practices in Chinese social media. First Monday Online,
17(3).Bei, J. (2013). How Chinese journalists use Weibo
microblogging for investigative reporting. Reuters Institute for
the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. Retrieved from
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/Publications/fellows__papers/2012-2013/How_Chinese_journalists_use_Weibo_microblogging_for_investigative_reporting.pdfBell,
A., & Garrett, P. (Eds.). (1998). Approaches to Media
Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Bruns, A., Burgess,
J., Nicolai, T., Kirchhoff, L., & Highfield, T. (2011). Mapping
the Australian Networked Public Sphere. Social Science Computer
Review, 29(3), 277-287.Castells, M. (2004). The network society: A
Cross-cultural perspective. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing
Limited.Castells, M. (2008). The new public sphere: Global civil
society, communication networks, and global governance. The Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616(1),
78-93. Castells, M., & Cardoso, G. (Eds.). (2006). The network
society: From knowledge to policy. Washington, DC: Center for
Transatlantic Relations, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.Fairclough, N.
(1995). Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.Gao, Q., Abel, F.,
Houben, G.-J., & Yu, Y. (2012, 2012). A Comparative Study of
Users Microblogging Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter. Paper
presented at the International Conference on User Modeling and
Personalization, Montreal, Canada.Gladwell, M., & Shirky, C.
(2011). From innovation to revolution: Do social media make
protests possible? Foreign Affairs, 90(2), 153-154.Habermas, J.
(1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry Into A Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press.Hassid, J. (2012). The politics of China's emerging
micro-blogs: Something new or more of the same? Paper presented at
the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, New
Orleans LA. Havel, V. (1975). Dear Dr. Husak. Retrieved 22 August,
2013, from
http://vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=eseje&val=1_aj_eseje.html&typ=HTMLHofstede,
G. (1991). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind.
London: McGraw-Hill.Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M.
(2010). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. New York:
McGraw Hill Professional.Hofstede, G., & Peterson, M. F.
(2000). National Values and Organizational Practices. In N. M.
Ashkanasy, C. P. M. Wilderom & M. F. Peterson (Eds.), Handbook
of Organizational Culture and Climate (pp. 401-405). London:
Sage.Iosifidis, P. (2011). The public sphere, social networks and
public service media. Information, Communication & Society,
14(5), 619. Ji, J. (2012). Reflection on media response in 7.23
train crash: Weibo In action. Today's Mass Media, 01, 94-95. Jiang,
M. (2010). Chinese Internet Events. In A. Esarey & R. Kluver
(Eds.), The Internet in China: Online Business, Information,
Distribution and Social Connectivity. New York: Berkshire
Publishing.Joseph, F. (2012). Twitter and the New Publicity. et
Cetera, 69(1), 55-71. King, G., Pan, J., & Roberts, M. E.
(2013). How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but
Silences Collective Expression. American Political Science Review,
107(2).Knox, C. C. (2013). Public administrators' use of social
media platforms: Overcoming the legitimacy dilemma? Administration
& Society, 1-20.Lasswell, H. D. (1948).Power and Personality.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company.Lu, J., & Qiu, Y. X.
(2013). Microblogging and social change in China. Asian
Perspective, 37(3), 305-331. Mazali, T. (2011). Social Media as a
New Public Sphere. Leonardo, 44(3), 290-291.Leximancer Whiter
Paper, Retrieved 18 June 2014 from
https://www.leximancer.com/lmedia/Leximancer_White_Paper_2010.pdfPannen,
U. (2010). Social media: A new architecture of political public
sphere. Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 23(3), 56-63.
Papacharissi, Z. (2002). The virtual sphere: The Internet as a
public sphere. New Media & Society, 4(1), 9-27. Pei, M. (2010).
Rights and resistance-the changing contexts of the dissent
movement. In E. J. Perry & M. Selden (Eds.), Chinese society:
Change, conflict and resistance. Florence, KY, USA:
Routledge.Rheingold, H. (2008). Using participatory media and
public voice to encourage civic engagement. In L. W. Bennet (Ed.),
Civic life online: Learning how digital media can engage youth
(Vol. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on
Digital Media and Learning, pp. 97-118). Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press.Roberts, B. (2009). Beyond the 'networked public sphere':
Politics, participation and technics in Web 2.0. Fibreculture
Journal(14). Romero, D. M., Meeder, B., & Kleinberg, J. (2011).
Differences in the Mechanics of Information Diffusion Across
Topics: Idioms, Political Hashtags, and Complex Contagion on
Twitter. Paper presented at the The 20th International Conference
on World Wide Web, Hyderabad, India.Smith, K., Humphreys, J. S.,
& Jones, J. A. (2006). Essential tips for measuring levels of
consumer satisfaction with rural health service quality.Rural and
Remote Health, 6(4), Australian Rural Health Education Network,
Australia, 1-8.Ross, K. A. (2011). The Internet in China: Rumour
and memes. Paper presented at the Australia Asia Pacific Research
Network Research Seminar, Hobart, Australia.Sb, ., Rose, J., &
Nyvang, T. (2009). The role of social networking services in
eParticipation. In A. Macintosh & E. Tambouris (Eds.),
Electronic Participation (Vol. 5694, pp. 46-55): Springer Berlin
Heidelberg.Sb, ., Rose, J., & Flak, L. S. (2008). The shape of
eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area.
Government Information Quarterly, 25(3), 400-428.Sanford, C. C.
(2012). Towards understanding eParticipation in the public sphere.
Review of Business Research, 12(1), 140. Scammell, M. (2000). The
Internet and civic engagement: The age of the citizen-consumer.
Political Communication, 17(4), 351-356. Shen, X. (2011). Public
discourse in Weibo public sphere: A case study in NPC and CPPCC
microblogs on People's Daily Online. News World, 6, 90-91. Shirky,
C. (2011). The political power of social media: Technology, the
public sphere, and political change. Foreign Affairs, 90(1), 28.
Sullivan, J. (2013). China's Weibo: Is faster different? New Media
& Society, 0(0), 1-14.Tipaldo, G., & Santangelo, A. (Eds.).
(2013). Handbook of TV Quality Assessment. Preston, UK: UCLan
Publishing.Wu, S., Hofman, J., Mason, W., & Watts, D. (2011).
Who says what to whom on twitter. Proceedings of the 20th
International Conference on World Wide Web, 705-714.XinxiShibao.
(2013). Sina Weibo now has over 500 million registered users
Retrieved March 12, 2013 from
http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2013-02-25/09348086534.shtmlXu, X.
(2011). Internet facilitated civic engagement in China's context: A
case study of the Internet event of Wenzhou High-speed Train
Accident. (Master), Columbia University. Yeo, G., & Li, E. X.
(2012). Yin and Yang: Sina Weibo and the Chinese State. New
Perspectives Quarterly, 29(2), 7-9.Zhang, X. (2010). Weibo and
public sphere, Retrieved 16 May 2013 from
http://blog.voc.com.cn/blog_showone_type_blog_id_665360_p_1.htmlZheng,
Y. (2012). Netizens' freedom and borderline: Reflections on speech
freedom in Weibo public sphere. Social Science Research(1),
187-191. Zhu, T., Phipps, D., Pridgen, A., Crandall, J. R., &
Wallach, D.S. (2013, August). The velocity of censorship:
High-fidelity detection of microblog post deletions. Paper
presented at the 22nd USENIX Security Symposium, Washington,
USA.