The Networked Creativity in the Censored Web 2.0

THE NETWORKED CREATIVITY IN THE

CENSORED WEB 2.0A Network and Content Analysis of Chinese Twitter Users’

Adaptation to Internet Censorship • Weiai (Wayne) Xu, PhD Candidate, Department of Communication, SUNY-Buffalo

• Miao Feng, PhD Candidate, Department of Communication, University of Illinois - Chicago

BACKGROUND• China’s Great Firewall (GFW): a sophisticated cyber--infrastructure to limit

access to popular international web services and to filter traffics containing

undesirable content (Freedom House, 2013)

• Reinforced rhetoric to justify domestic internet regulation and “internet

sovereignty” following Edward Snowden’s revelation of U.S. eavesdropping

on global communications (The Diplomat, 2014)

• A trend contradicting open data and big data movement

BACKGROUND

Will innovations happen here?

FACTS

Online sales on “Singles Day” reached $9 billion, bigger than Black Friday. “Singles Day” is a manufactured holiday, popularized by Chinese internet users.

Innovations in consumer culture and products

WeChat, an IM rivalry to WhatsApp and LINE

The world's 3rd largest smartphone distributor. A competitor to Samsung

More importantly

Creative internet-supported civil movement

Innovative ways to bypass Internet censorship (Freedom House,

2013)

• Virtual private networks

• Proxies

• Peer-to-peer sharing

• Coded language

• Web 2.0 platforms enable networked

collaboration to crowd-source technological

adaptive strategies to Internet censorship

• Web 2.0 platforms also facilitate networked

political strategies aimed at changing Internet

policy

A case in point

Use of Twitter hashtags for GFW-related discussions and

mobilization

#GFW

#F***KGFW

# 翻墙 (climb the wall)

# 科学上网 # 真理部 (Ministry of Truth)

# 防火墙 (firewall)

A webometric approach to analyze the Twitter activities


Why study their profiles: they are positive

deviants—the innovators who challenge the

establishment and norms, and embrace and

evangelize alternative solutions (Pascale, Sternin,

& Sternin, 2010).

How? : location, profile image and profile

description (all available via Twitter API)


Why study their profiles: SNA can identify central

Twitter users and reveals whether the Twitter community

is inclusive/exclusive, democratic/authoritarian, and

united/divided community.

How? : standard network measures (nodal-level

and network level): betweenness centrality, density,

centralization, and clustering


Why study their profiles: a typology of engagement

actions to support crowdsourcing and counteraction

against internet censorship

How? : content coding framework based on Van

Laer and Van Aelst’s (2010) digital action repertoire

used in social movement studies


Van Laer, J., & Van Aelst, P. (2010). Internet and social movement action repertoires: Opportunities and limitations. Information, Communication & Society, 13(8), 1146-1171.


Our approach

HIGH THRESHOLD LOW THRESHOLD

TECHNICAL TACTICS

POLITICAL TACTICS

NETWORK TACTICS


Our approach

Technical tactics—such as spreading knowledge about setting up proxies, tweaking hosts files, spotting loopholes in the firewall.

political tactics—such as mobilizing virtual protests, email/phone bombs of ISPs, and culture jamming through parodies and satirical coded language.

networking tactics—reaching out to resourceful individuals and institutions to obtain skills or utilize the resourceful actors’ large followings to disseminate information.

Research Questions

1. What are the demographic and behavioral characteristics of the users involved in Twitter-based discussion and mobilization on the issue of internet censorship?

2. What are the characteristics of peer interactions among the users involved in Twitter-based discussion and mobilization on the issue of internet censorship?

3. What themes and engagement tactics are used by the users involved in Twitter-based discussion and mobilization on the issue of internet censorship?

Methods

Data source: Twitter API, Python scripts are used to download all tweets sent between 6-11-2014 and 8-17-2014

Data analysis plan

References• Freedom House (2013). Throttling Dissent: China’s New Leaders Refine Internet Control.

<http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/resources/Throttling%20Dissent_FOTN

%202013_China_0.pdf >.

• Pascale, R., Sternin, J., & Sternin, M. (2010). The power of positive deviance. Harvard

Business School Publishing, Boston, MA.

• The Diplomat (2014). China's 'Sovereign Internet'. <http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/chinas-

sovereign-internet/>.

• Van Laer, J., & Van Aelst, P. (2010). Internet and social movement action repertoires:

Opportunities and limitations. Information, Communication & Society, 13(8), 1146-1171.

Technology

The Networked Creativity in the Censored Web 2.0