As civic spaces are closed and groups are deleted, individuals with little or no connections outside of social networks are stripped of their backlog of resources and connections. In the particular case of WeChat — which users in China use to chat, pay, publish blogs, travel, and store other digital records — a suspension or ban would cause users to cannot access many communication tools and daily life.
This is not about the topic. This censorship is essentially about dismantling social resources. Takedowns not only solve the short-term problem of text or images that government organizations want to remove, but they also undermine activists’ ability to rebuild by isolating them and degrading them. their ability to create new resources. Moderators can ensure that these groups remain silent. The formulation of the concept of censorship alone overlooked the damage that destruction of the foundations of organizations and elements of civil society could cause.
Chinese censors have inactive using content moderation or just keywords for almost a decade, discovered from the outset that the social nature of social networks is key to modernizing and maintaining the Great Firewall of China. Xi Jinping himself described cyberspace in a 2016 speech as a “spiritual garden” for information innovation and cybersecurity. He declare that this concept garden has “clear sky, fresh air with a good ecosystem in cyberspace that is suitable for the interests of the people. In turn, a pestilent atmosphere with a deteriorating ecosystem in cyberspace is not in the interests of the people.” It was not specified but the key to his analogy was what, and who, would have to be pruned and removed.
The Communist Party internal document also acknowledges the power of digital social networks beyond banning specific keywords. In preliminary studies of the community environment on Weibo leading to increased control over social influencers, researchers have identified the environment as a new frontier in the civil space. Party Scholar Written: “Because cyberspace has no systemic barriers or ideological constraints… different classes, regions and media types can exchange, integrate or confront ideas, making the environment The field of public opinion is increasingly complex.”
Theme-based bans remain an integral part of censorship, including historically taboo events such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and content published by other media. Prohibited media like New York Times, Washington Postand BBC. However, after the rise of bloggers and social media influencers in the late ’00s, the public opinion environment was also precisely targeted by campaigns to limit the impact of influencers. influence and capacity of NGO thought leaders in community building. In theory, social media users with large followings are private citizens. However, the mid-2010s presented them with a choice: They could serve and support the Chinese government’s authority, or they could face disciplinary action by law enforcement and destroy their community. In 2013, amid a series of blogger crackdowns, novelist Hao Qun summary matching trend: “They want to sever those ties and make the relationship on Weibo atomize, like those in Chinese society, where everyone is a lone atom .”
By the time Peng comes out in November 2021 Video calls with IOC president Thomas Bach, the Weibo and WeChat environments have virtually eliminated discussions with infringing keywords or presenter for a more awkward cover-up email previously sent to the Women’s Tennis Association.
