2. Regulating
Online Content
Overview:
● Chinese constitution stipulates a right
to free speech
● Web-based companies in China
required to sign pledge of self-
regulation and professional ethics
● Roughly 100,000 monitors manually
review content
● Relatively little information about
automated censorship processes
3. User and Data Overview
● 100 million daily users
● 90% of users under the age of 30
● Weibo API --- much like Twitter’s API
● Earlier on, JSON contained
information about whether the weibo
was censored or not
● JSON dump from HKU School of
Journalism
8. 1 Censorship is almost entirely in response to specific events
2 Dissenting responses to specific events reveals general causes of discontent
3 Degree of state sensitivity to social media depends on political climate
