The full report can be read in PDF form here. Below is a brief introduction. A pilot study conducted by CDT and Doublethink Lab examines “embedded propaganda” (EP) in African news media. Our study defines EP as the practice of...
Given the potential global consequences of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, it has naturally attracted worldwide attention. In China, initially reticent coverage by state media has given way to editorializing about the...
A number of recent events have brought renewed attention to the diminishing role of investigative journalists in China, and to the many impediments they face in their work. Following this month’s announcement of the elimination...
A fire in Xinyu, Jiangxi Province killed 39 people and injured nine more on Wednesday, January 24. It was the second deadly blaze to claim student lives in a single week: a fire in an elementary school in Henan killed 13...
Two deadly school fires in China within the last week have led to a surge of online criticism of inadequate fire safety measures, as well as complaints about online censorship, government callousness, and a dearth of media...
The death of 13 elementary schoolers in a dormitory blaze has sparked outrage across China, not least due to a marked dearth of independent reporting on the disaster. The lack of media coverage of the blaze is highly reminiscent...
Chinese state media’s external-facing content has become increasingly known for its aggressive stance towards Western geopolitical rivals and its ideological consistency under centralized leadership. Recent reports about Chinese...
World Press Freedom Day, on May 3, has rarely been a time for celebration in China, where restrictions on the media have kept the country near the bottom of Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) Press Freedom Index for the past...
The suppression of news about a Beijing hospital fire that killed 29 last week has inspired vigorous discussion of censorship on the Chinese internet. Just after noon on Tuesday, April 18, a fire broke out in southwestern...
In 2013, Xi Jinping introduced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and called on state media to “tell China’s story well.” Almost ten years later, the CCP’s external propaganda apparatus is struggling to present a positive image...
Surveys have shown that Xi Jinping’s hardline foreign policy is increasingly unpopular abroad. Given the CCP’s mixed success using soft power to repair China’s image, party propagandists have increasingly resorted to sharper...
In the days surrounding U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, the Chinese government scrambled to shape the narrative of her visit in media spheres around the globe. A range of tools were deployed in an effort to...
China’s media elites are searching for new ways to tell China’s story abroad, and local researchers have taken note. Last week, the National Bureau of Asian Research, a U.S.-based think tank, released a report titled “Political...
On Monday, March 21, 2022, China Eastern Airline Flight 5735 crashed in Guangxi, killing all 132 people on board. The Guangzhou-bound plane departed from Kunming in the early afternoon, flew normally for approximately an hour,...
China’s soft power initiatives are often derided by Western observers as ineffective or counterproductive. Over a hundred Confucius Institutes in the U.S. and Europe have been targeted as arms of the Chinese state and forced to...
One of China’s premier investigative reporting outlets, Caixin, has been removed from the Cyberspace Administration of China’s (CAC) latest media “whitelist.” The whitelist governs how news is shared across the Chinese internet:...
These are trying times for imaginary friends, and for the media outlets who rely on them for timely, conveniently “on-message” quotes. A July 24 Facebook post by purported Swiss biologist Wilson Edwards cast doubt on the WHO...
The CDT Censorship Digest is a monthly round-up of censored speech, propaganda developments, and rights defense in China. We have selected and adapted the most relevant and interesting stories for our English readers. We...
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