Accountability from Cyberspace? Scandals Exposure on Internet and Official Governance in China
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Transcript of Accountability from Cyberspace? Scandals Exposure on Internet and Official Governance in China
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Accountability from Cyberspace? Scandals Exposure on Internet and Official Governance in China Chen Shuo
Department of Economics, Fudan University
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Dacai Yang(“Brother Wristwatch”)
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Zhengfu Lei
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Does social media in China increase the accountability of the government?
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Motivation• Mass media serve the critical role of watchdog in
democracies▫ Hamilton et al., (2005); Schedler (1999); Smulovitz
and Peruzzotti (2000); Brunetti and Weder (2003)
• Media in authoritarian countries have been manipulated by the government to increase its support from citizens▫ Becker (2004); Shirk (2011)
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•However, great variations of media freedom exist in authoritarian regimes
Burkina Faso and Uganda (Freedom House , 2014) Vietnam (Maleskyet al.2012; Heng, 1998, 2004) China (King et al.,2012; Lorentzen, forthcoming)
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Research Question•The effects of online discourse about officials’ scandals on government disciplining.
•What is the mechanism through which the information revealed online makes the government accountable?
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Why China?•Hold macro-conditions constant
▫Culture▫National policy etc.
•A “clean” setting▫No national elections (Hyde and Marinov,
2012)
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Background• China has experienced the booming of Internet
development with the largest number of Internet users in the world.
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Weibo• Chinese version of twitter, launched in 2009 • The most popular social media in China
▫over 500 million users in 2013▫89.1% of the internet users
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Data •Randomly crawl 26,608,054 posts in SINA
Weibo from Jan 1, 2011 to Jun 30, 2012
▫PMSinaMsgCrawler (http://cnpameng.com/)
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Step 1:randomly crawl Weibo’s overlay
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Step 2: Time Distribution of Official Position Related Posts (348,983)
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Step 3: Manual Search
•547 cases about the scandals of government officials
▫230 economic issues (经济问题 )▫128 malfeasance (渎职 )▫57 sex scandals (性丑闻 )▫129 inappropriate behavior and speech (不当言行 )
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malfeasance
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Inappropriate behavior and speech
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Findings•Scandals revealed online have different
effects on official governance in authoritarian regimes. ▫Sex scandal
No effect in democracy (Miller, 1996; Tumber and Waisbord, 2004)
Significant effect in autocracy▫Inappropriate behavior and speech
Significant effect in democracy (Kampf, 2009; Ekstrom and Johansson, 2006)
No effect in autocracy
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Social media and formal media•State-controlled newspaper(机关报 )
▫Local ▫Non-local
•Commercialized newspaper (市场化报纸 )
•Internet
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Reporting time difference between local and non-local newspapers
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Scandals in Internet and non-local newspaper
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Scandals in Internet and local newspaper
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Findings•Local and non-local newspapers report
different types of online scandals
▫Non-local newspaper more likely to report malfeasance and sex
scandals▫Local newspaper
less likely to report scandals of all types
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Interaction between social and formal media
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Findings•Traditional media play an important role
in holding the government accountable.•The government selectively punishes
officials based on the type of scandals revealed online.
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•The different patterns of reporting online scandals between local and non-local newspapers show that formal media’s check on officials’ behavior may face pressure from local governments, and thus only apply to officials in other provinces.
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Rethinking the role of social media in authoritarian regimes •Optimistic view
▫ Social media play a critical role in promoting democratic transitions and good governance (Khzzaeli and Stockermer, 2013)
•Our research▫Authoritarian regimes may strategically
respond to information revealed by social media to maintain its survival (King et al.,2012; Lorentzen, forthcoming).
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“Should not underestimate the role of authoritarian institutions as either”