CONFLICTOS RELACIONADOS CON LA CONVIVENCIA COMUNITARIA

While Weibo provides a space for counter-publics that potentially brings citizen empowerment, it also provides a space for the state to exercise top-down political control. Zombies, official accounts of government institutions and staffs, and the deletions of contents are three major mechanisms of political control on Weibo. The exercise of the three mechanisms aims at maintaining the mainstream discourses propagated by the state and strengthening its power. However, the Chinese cyber world is far from what J. Liu characterized as a regime of “new authoritarianism”.

As we have shown in the case studies, state media such as People’s Daily, state

institutions such as the Yuhang government, and government officials such as N are typical official accounts of government institutions and staff that are on Weibo. These official accounts, along with the zombies who frequently comment under the official accounts have persistently preached the government’s agenda and produced the top-down influences online. One consequence is the emergence of the numerous “self-employed fifty-cent party” (zi gan wu),

those who voluntarily refute “rumors” targeted at the state and accuse people with more “liberal” views as “betraying the country”.

In spite of the political control, our survey result shows that the majority of people believe that expression on Weibo is free, Weibo has produced a big influence on Chinese society, and the use of Weibo has increased democracy. Participants answered that the reason that Weibo

increases, reduces, or has no influence on democracy lies in the dimensions of freedom of expression, public supervision, information source, transparency, accessibility, speed and range, and rumor spreading. Most participants indicated that Weibo influences them by providing a platform for hearing and expressing multiple opinions, and a platform for participants to engage in the discussions of political and social issues, as educational issues, food safety and environmental issues are the three social issues that participants follow the most.

Our literature review has shown that some scholars have focused on the state’s control of social media in China, while some others have emphasized the capacities of citizens in bringing change. I argue that whether there is more top-down discursive control or there is more bottom- up participation depends on the themes of the cases. In some cases, Weibo mainly serves as a platform for the state to propagate and form nationalist attitudes among netizens through a top- down way of communication. As the survey shows, cases that engage in issues of sovereignty of the state, such as the Xinjiang and Kunming “terrorist” attack incidents, are more likely to arouse nationalist sentiment on Weibo. As we examined from the case studies, issues that engage in domestic structural inequality and netizens’ self-interest, such as legal justice, class divisions, environmental issues, corruptions and gender inequality, are more likely to cause bottom-up communication that create counter-discourses.

Moreover, the possibility of the deletion of posts depends on what level these massages are considered to threaten the “stability” of the state. Specifically, radical collective expressions that link with big-scale collective actions, such as the Yuhang anti-trash incineration protest, are more likely to be censored. Individual expressions with criticisms and dissatisfactions toward the government but do not link directly to collective actions are less likely to be censored. The Xia Junfeng Case engaged in the injustice of the individual street vendor, and was less likely to

arouse collective actions, and therefore more criticisms were allowed on Weibo. The sanitation workers’ protest was only at the local level and had less influence on Weibo, and therefore caused little if any top-down state intervention.

Netizens have also created various ways to avoid and “fight against” the state’s political control. First of all, the state censorship cannot delete all the “sensitive” massages because they are continuously produced by people, and some messages are exposed for a short time before being deleted, forming what Rauchfleisch and Schäfer identified as the “short-term public sphere”. Second, the actions of deletion and the “fifty-cent party” are visible to netizens, for the posts are already read by the netizens, and the reposts are not fully deleted on the reposters’ personal pages. The way to name the “fifty-cent party” is also a symbolic form of resistance. Third, some debates and arguments appear in the comments, which are less likely to be detected through the filtering of sensitive words. Fourth, the language choices of netizens affects whether the posts are deleted or not. Smart use of language, sometimes encoded, indirect and humorous language, can often avoid the filtering of “sensitive” words. Fifth, the deletions of posts, which

symbolize the exercise of the top-down state power on citizens, often further trigger the anger among netizens and thus activate stronger counter-power that lead to resistance. The interplay of power is therefore multidimensional on the Internet, as Castells has suggested. One example of this is that the government officials and institutions are often severely criticized by netizens.

Therefore, Weibo has become a discursive “battle ground” between the grassroots and the state, and between different social actors: the grassroots, the state, the commercial profit maker, celebrities, opinion leaders, etc. As operated by the private corporation, Sina Weibo is double-sided. On the one other hand, Sina Weibo has to cooperate with the state in censoring posts. On the other hand, as a commercial social media platform that works with the advertising

model, even though Sina has to obey the rules of the government, it still has an interest in keeping the platform pluralistic enough to cater to users.