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(7,107 posts) Thu May 19, 2016, 05:30 PM May 2016

We Finally Know What China’s Propaganda Army Does Online

http://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-what-china-s-propaganda-army-does-onlin-1777564392

China is notorious for employing an estimated 2 million government propagandists online. But new research on their tactics reveals a surprising strategy: China’s online army isn’t trying to argue with anyone who opposes the government. It’s just changing the subject.

Harvard researchers published a new study this week that examines the vast trove of documents leaked in 2014 from the Internet Propaganda Office of Zhanggong. The researchers found that instead of trying to actively engage people with arguments about why they were wrong, the goal of the Chinese propagandist was instead to shift the conversation about something else entirely.

The propagandists are nicknamed the Fifty Cent Party because they’re reportedly paid 50 cents (US$0.08) for every message they post. And they’ve been damn busy. The researchers estimate that they create roughly 448 million social media posts per year. About 53 percent of those messages are on government-controlled sites. The remaining posts show up on other popular social media services like China’s tremendously popular Weibo.

The paper, authored by Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, explains:

The vast majority of scholars, journalists, activists, and participants in social media have, until now, been convinced that the massive 50¢ party is devoted to engaging in argument that defends the regime, its leaders, and their policies

Our evidence indicates the opposite—that the 50¢ party engages in almost no argument of any kind and is instead devoted primarily to distraction

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