Chinese regulation of Social Media
China’s heavily regulated social media policy undeniably has political implications in regards to propaganda and dictatorship. However I am in no position to argue for or against this complicated issue. Rather I can’t help but be curious as to how these guidelines impact China’s sociality through online social networks, and what they’re view on the western model is. Do they think we are anarchists and rebellious? At constant conflict with our accused bigotry and political correctness – would they be wrong? In fairness we generally view their model as restrictive, liberating and authoritarian. But is it? Michael Anti discusses in his TedTalk that China has an inner internet regulated by the government through a server located in Beijing. This allows them to access any information they want, whenever they want; used to detect any political speech and monitor revolt. As consequence, Chinese citizens have their own unique social media sites, very similar to the ones we are familiar with. Facebook is Ren-Ren Twitter, Weibo and Youtube, Youku. As you can see here, the Ren-Ren is a copycat of the facebook platform. The only differing aspect is that Ren-Ren is monocultural, being a platform only accessed by Chinese citizens. Westerners are quick to accuse this as anti-democracy, but we naturally created our own ‘monocultural’ groups anyway. So are we that different? The academic term is ‘homophily’ used to describe sub-groups on social media who form on the basis of a shared ideology. I suppose though the core distinction is that homophiles still have exposure to differing ideologies that, by default, define their status as a homophiles. With this logic, my Chinese monoculture network and western cultural homophily analogy is insufficient, dur to the governments strick regulations on western exposure. Dang it!! I’ve made my own argument redundant again… There still is gradual acculturation however from western agents. Chinese citizens access from their YouTube, Youku, chinese dubbed western shows. Crampton mentions in his article, ‘The Social Media of China’ that Prison Break is a popular show with the west. Chinese citizens are revolting against the governments stern regulations, such as protests against politicians covering up a horrific train accident form wider news.












