Regularizing Rioting: Permitting Public Protest in an Authoritarian Regime

Lorentzen, Peter

doi:10.2139/ssrn.995330

Cited by 181 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Avoiding the spread of common knowledge about collective action events (and not grievances) is consistent with research by Kuran (1989Kuran ( , 1991, Lohmann (1994), and Lorentzen (2013), who focus specifically on the spread of information about real-world protest and ongoing collective action rather than the generic spread of common knowledge more broadly.…”

Section: Authoritarian Politicssupporting

confidence: 77%

How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument

2017

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INTRODUCTION Social media in China appears as vibrant and extensive as in any Western country, with more than 1,300 social media companies and websites, and millions of posts authored every day by people all over the country. At the same time, the Chinese regime imposes extensive and varied controls over of the entire system (Brady 2009;Cairns and Carlson 2016;Knockel et al. 2015;MacKinnon 2012;Ng 2015;Shirk 2011;Stockmann 2013;Stockmann and Gallagher 2011;Yang 2009). Which social media companies are prevented from operating in China is easy to see (the so-called Great Firewall of China), and the scholarly literature now offers considerable evidence on how and why Gary King is Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, 1737 Cambridge St., Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138; GaryKing.org (King@Harvard.edu).Jennifer Pan is Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, 450 Serra Mall, Building 120, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94304; jenpan.com (jp1@stanford.edu).Margaret E. Roberts is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, Social Sciences Building 301, 9500 Gilman Dr., #0521, La Jolla, CA 92093-0521; MargaretRoberts.net (meroberts@ucsd.edu).Our thanks to Neel Guha, Peter Dyrud, Yingjie Fan, and many others for superb research assistance; Danielle Allen, Peter Bol, Becky Fair, Chase Harrison, Iain Johnston, Franziska Keller, Blake Miller, Jean Oi, Samantha Ravich, Brandon Stewart, Daniela Stockmann, Andy Walder, Yuhua Wang, Chaodan Zheng, and Yun Zhu for helpful comments; and DARPA (contract W31P4Q-13-C-0055/983-3) and the National Science Foundation (grant 1500086) for research support. Authors are listed alphabetically. Data and information necessary to replicate the results in this article appear in King et al. (2017).Received: August 26, 2016; revised: November 6, 2016; accepted: April 11, 2017. they censor certain individual social media posts that have appeared on the web or filter them out before appearing. In both cases, the censorship apparatus allows a great deal of criticism of the regime, its officials, and their policies (which can be useful information for the central government in managing local leaders) but stops discussions that can generate collective action on the ground . 1According to numerous speculations by scholars, activists, journalists, officials in other governments, and participants in social media, the Chinese regime also conducts "astroturfing," or what we might call reverse censorship, surreptitiously posting large numbers of fabricated social media comments as if they were the genuine opinions of ordinary Chinese people. The people hired for this purpose are known formally as Internet commentators ( ), although more widely as 50c party members ( ), so called because they are rumored to be paid 50 cents (5 jiao, , or about $0.08) to write and post each comment (Tong and Lei 2013). We show that this rumor turns out to be incorrect; however, we adopt this widely used ter...

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Section: Authoritarian Politicssupporting

confidence: 77%

How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument

2017

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“…If regimes suffer from economic crises more often than is reported in the official economic data series, and if these previously hidden economic crises are associated with 65 Beissinger 2007;Diaz-Cayeros, Magaloni, and Weingast 2003;Magaloni 2006. 66 Lorentzen 2013. 67 Acemoglu and Robinson 2005;Chiozza and Goemans 2004;Geddes 1999. regime collapses, the extant result is again strengthened.…”

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confidence: 92%

Juking the Stats? Authoritarian Information Problems in China

Wallace¹

2014

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

237

104

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Economic statistics inform citizens of general conditions, while central leaders use them to evaluate local officials. Are economic data systematically manipulated? After establishing discrepancies in economic data series cross-nationally, this article examines Chinese sub-national growth data. It leverages variation in the likelihood of manipulation over two dimensions, arguing that politically sensitive data are more likely to be manipulated at politically sensitive times. Gross domestic product (GDP) releases generate headlines, while highly correlated electricity production and consumption data are relatively unnoticed. In Chinese provinces, the difference between GDP and electricity growth increases in years with leadership turnover, which is consistent with juking the stats for political reasons. The analysis points to the political role of information and the limits of nonelectoral accountability mechanisms in authoritarian regimes.

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“…Conventional methods such as spies and secret police alongside more contemporary approaches such as social media monitoring are useful but often imperfect tools for keeping tabs on citizens. While Peter Lorentzen (2013) has argued that autocrats sometimes allow for "small-scale, narrowly economic protests" to gain information about mass grievances within the population, it remains unclear how valuable the information is from such small protests, how autocrats distinguish ex ante between tolerable and nontolerable protests, and how autocrats can manage such protests to ensure that they do not provoke more collective action rather than less.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complementary Institutions in Authoritarian Regimes: The Everyday Politics of Constituency Service in Singapore

Ong¹

2015

Journal of East Asian Studies

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Regularizing Rioting: Permitting Public Protest in an Authoritarian Regime

Cited by 181 publications

References 23 publications

How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument

How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument

Juking the Stats? Authoritarian Information Problems in China

Complementary Institutions in Authoritarian Regimes: The Everyday Politics of Constituency Service in Singapore

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