Weibo and the outsourcing of opinion guidance

Abstract

The Chinese government has sought to extend political controls over netizens, while reducing the cost of doing so, by outsourcing the responsibility of the day-today management of users to websites and social media platforms. These private companies must manage users under the supervised guidelines of the state or risk being closed. This project seeks to understand the evolution of this relationship within one of the most influential social media platforms, Sina Weibo. By investigating Weibo’s relationship with the state, the project hopes to answer the following research questions: How does Weibo manage its users under state direction? To what extent does Weibo cooperate with the state? Is there coordination between Weibo management and the policies of the state or the Party Line as expressed by the state media? How is user subjectivity formed through Weibo user management on behalf of the state? This project uses four key Chinese social media crises between 2011 and 2014 as case studies to help answer these questions. The case studies investigated are: The Jasmine Protests of 2011; the Wenzhou high speed train crash of 2011; The Bo Xilai crisis of 2012; and Occupy Central in 2014. Each case study uses the internal work logs of Weibo, which reveal the daily directives from Weibo management to censors, outlining the censorship targets, guidelines and goals of each shift. The shift logs reveal the different categories of users and content, and how censors are instructed to manage each. Using these files, case studies investigate how each crisis developed, how Weibo responded, and how that response relates to government supervision. In examining how Weibo management deals with different challenges, state supervision, and changes in technique, the goal is to shed light on how this relationship meets or fails to meet state goals, as well as whether this form of management is changing or evolving. The Investigation into these case studies reveals that Weibo is responsive to state directives and has internalized the Party’s “bottom line.” Weibo filters content that crosses this line the most strongly. This content includes political rumors, incitement to action, and other attacks on Party leaders. While Weibo sometimes fails to filter content along the guidelines desired by the state, the logs and cases reveal a trend towards more efficient and effective managing of users and filtering of content by Weibo on behalf of the state.