Chinese Bloggers Really Are Edgy
From China Journal:
Western journalists often write about the ability of Chinese bloggers to challenge authority and provide an alternative voice to the propaganda that often fills China’s official news media. How accurate is that description across China’s vast blogosphere?
Ashley Esarey, an assistant professor at Middlebury College, set out to describe the political discussion on Chinese blogs in a quantitative way. At the Chinese Internet Research Conference on Saturday, he shared the results of content analysis he conducted on more than 500 blogs with political content and discussion of news events from 2006. He compared the results of that study to a similar content analysis of major Chinese newspapers.
He found that, at least in empirical terms, Chinese bloggers do live up to their reputation. Some 61% of Chinese blogs he studied carried criticism, while only 19% of Chinese newspapers did the same. (Notably, corporations were a top subject of criticism for the bloggers, along with national events and the central government– Esarey’s chart below has more details).
Read also Chinese Internet Research Conference: Two Views of Chinese Internet Users, Opportunity and Obstacles for Online Video by Sky Canaves, Beyond the ‘Wall’ by Geoffrey A. Fowler, and The Chinese Internet: Myth and Reality by Sky Canaves.
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Origin: Geoffrey A. Fowler, China Journal
