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SELECTIVE CENSORSHIP- Study finds criticism is accepted well but any suggestion of collective action is a no-no

WHEN Barack Obama visited China in 2009, the American leader made it a point to publicly declare himself "a big supporter of non-censorship" and said that criticism made him a better president.

"I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable," he said. "They can begin to think for themselves."

Implicit in his remarks was the assumption that Chinese censors try to stamp out criticisms of the government and Communist Party.

Well, a new study by Harvard University casts doubt on that supposition. The study, which investigated "the most extensive effort to selectively censor human expression ever implemented", declares that the purpose of the Chinese censorship programme "is not to suppress criticism of the state or the party".

Censorship of social media in China, it turns out, is by no means a blunt instrument. Instead, it is finely tuned, with censors across the country allowing critical viewpoints of the government and of government officials.

"Posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders and its policies are not more likely to be censored," the study, led by Professor Gary King of Harvard's department of government, concluded.

"Negative posts do not accidentally slip through a leaky or imperfect system. The evidence indicates that the censors have no intention of stopping them."

Even more surprisingly, the study concludes that the Chinese government is pretty evenhanded when it censors the Internet, deleting "views that are both supportive and critical of the state".

The primary goal of censorship, it turns out, is to restrict "the spread of information that may lead to collective action", even action that is not directed against the government or, indeed, is not overtly political.

Read the rest here:
Beijing works the Internet to its advantage