Evolution of opinions : opinion diversity, dynamic and social control in China

Abstract

Digital technology has greatly changed the opinion landscape in China. Individuals are equipped with cost-efficient means of accessing information and sharing opinions, whereas the authoritarian regime has also feasted on the advancement of technology to modernize its social control scheme. Current thesis draws on large-scale user-generated data collected between 2012 and 2019 to track the longitudinal changes of opinion diversity on Weibo and disentangle the intertwined relationship between public opinions, news media, and state control. Results show that Weibo accommodates a large group of politically apathetic people, who are immersed in entertainment contents and show little interest in issues covered by news media. In face of this, the regime has been observed to undertake at these three transitions: (1) recruiting entertainment stars into propaganda cadre; (2) massively creating soft news, and (3) upgrading censorship apparatus. The first two are offensive strategies which are meant to widen the base of support for the regime, whereas the last is on the defensive against “hazardous” information. Current thesis reveals that the offensive strategies, despite being less discussed, are generally more influential in shaping public opinions than censorship. When confronted with external challenges, authorities often roll out hashtag campaigns in concert with a large group of entertainment stars, which appears to be a smart and calculated move against the backdrop of widespread political apathy. Based on ideological position detection results, I find that when politically apathetic people are politicized, they are moving closer to the mainstream newspapers in the opinion space. Therefore, although the politicization of apolitical publics can increase opinion diversity, such increasing diversity is tamed within the permissible boundary defined by party media and, by and large, does not contribute to deliberative discussion. Chapter 3 demonstrates how party media adapt themselves to cyberspace by openly embracing infotainment and intentionally distancing themselves from their Orwellian past of abstract dogmatism. They are offering more soft news than hard news to attract apathetic audience and then feed them with small portions of ideological messages to uphold the personal cult around the top leader. Such shift has proved effective in boosting engagement rates of not only media handles, but of the interstitial ideological messages. By embracing infotainment, party media can disseminate propaganda with less resistance. Finally, censorship is a double-edged sword, which can either silence people or backfire. People tend to stay silent if censorship is going harsh globally. But if people themselves or their social contacts are censored, they tend to fight back against the censorship by voicing their opinions. Moreover, people are synchronizing their behaviors with their social contacts in face of censorship and such behavioral contagion is impressively more influential than censorship itself in determining opinion expression. Generally speaking, by joining the tide of infotainment and exploiting the political ignorance, the ideological enforcement nowadays has become subtler and more productive than in the traditional authoritarian society. However, the support derived from political ignorance if not consolidated into a coherent system of beliefs could possibly vaporize and reverse itself easily.