The first-ever close analysis of leaked astroturf comments from China's "50c party" reveal Beijing's cybercontrol strategy

["David Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The first-ever close analysis of leaked astroturf comments from China's "50c party" reveal 
Beijing's cybercontrol strategy
Date: January 19, 2017 at 11:20:11 AM EST
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com

[Note:  This item comes from friend David Rosenthal.  DLH]

The first-ever close analysis of leaked astroturf comments from China's "50c party" reveal Beijing's cybercontrol 
strategy
By Cory Doctorow
Jan 18 2017
<https://boingboing.net/2017/01/18/the-first-ever-close-analysis.html>

The Harvard Institute for Quantitative Science team that published 2016's analysis of the Chinese government's '50c 
Party', who flood social media with government-approved comments has published a new paper, How the Chinese Government 
Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument, in which they reveal their painstaking 
analysis of a huge trove of leaked emails between 50c Party members and their government handlers.

The research refutes the widely held view that the 50c Party is a group of paid piece-workers who pile on to people who 
post negative comments about the government; rather, the 50c Party is a closely coordinated group of government workers 
whose messages are part of their normal, salaried duties, and consist largely of upbeat talk about upcoming government 
initiatives -- or issues that distract from scandals.

The analysis also reveals semantic features of 50c Party posts, making it possible to use relatively simple language 
classifiers to make guesses about which posts come from 50c Party members, and validates this hypothesis with a sly way 
of getting 50c Party members to reveal themselves through deceptive private messages.

One implication: if we assume that the Chinese government is very good at controlling public opinion, and if we want to 
adopt their tactics to counter Trump, this suggests that we should: a) coordinate to make a lot of noise about the 
Trump-denying activities over the next four years (eg California expanding public healthcare); b) coordinate to make a 
lot of noise about arbitrary upbeat subjects ("this new music is just great") on days when Trump is trying to draw 
everyone's attention to himself. But of course, the 50c Party is able to issue talking points to hundreds of thousands 
of people and make them work in lockstep.

One way to parsimoniously summarize existing empirical results about information control in China is with a theory of 
the strategy of the regime. This theory, which as with all theories is a simplification of the complex realities on the 
ground, involves two complementary principles the Chinese regime appears to follow, one passive and one active. The 
passive principle is do not engage on controversial issues: do not insert 50c posts supporting, and do not censor posts 
criticizing, the regime, its leaders, or their policies. The second, active, principle is stop discussions with 
collective action potential, by active distraction and active censorship. Cheerleading in directed 50c bursts is one 
way the government distracts the public, although this activity can be also be used to distract from general 
negativity, government related meetings and events with protest potential, etc. (Citizens criticize the regime without 
collective action on the ground in many ways, including even via unsubstantiated threats of protest and viral bursts of 
online-only activity — which, by this definition, do not have collective action potential and so are ignored by the 
government.)

These twin strategies appear to derive from the fact that the main threat perceived by the Chinese regime in the modern 
era is not military attacks from foreign enemies but rather uprisings from their own people. Staying in power involves 
managing their government and party agents in China’s 32 provincial-level regions, 334 prefecture-level divisions, 
2,862 county-level divisions, 41,034 township-level administrations, and 704,382 village-level subdivisions, and 
somehow keeping in check collective action organized by those outside of government. The balance of supportive and 
critical commentary on social media about specific issues, in specific jurisdictions, is useful to the government in 
judging the performance of (as well as keeping or replacing) local leaders and ameliorating other information problems 
faced by central authorities (Dimitrov, 2014a,b,c; Wintrobe, 1998). As such, avoiding any artificial change in that 
balance — such as from 50c posts or censorship — can be valuable. Distraction is a clever and useful strategy in 
information control in that an argument

[snip]

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