Translated material
Chinese Internet trolls: who are they?
Scientists from Harvard studied who fills the “positive agenda” of the PRC social network
Every year in Chinese social networks, someone leaves hundreds of millions of publications that are designed to distract users from criticism of the government. It was previously believed that the posts were written by the Army of the trolls hired by the Chinese government, but the study of Harvard University proved that this was not so. According to scientists, positive officials themselves write positive posts, and there is no evidence that they receive money for this. Medusa read the study of Chinese trolls and thesis retells it.
The Chinese Internet segment is filled with posts in support of the current authorities . It is believed that the messages leave “professional Internet trolls”-people who write posts for money and enter into discussions with critics of power. For each such post, trolls allegedly receive 50 cents, so in China they are called a “batch of 50 cents”. The fact that this party really exists is sure of scientists, activists, journalists and users of social networks, but so far no one could present convincing evidence that their posts are really paid. In addition, it was not known what goal the Chinese authorities pursue, if, of course, they actually contain an army of 250-300 thousand trolls.
They decided to study Chinese trolls at Harvard . Scientists analyzed the documents that “leaked” from the regional unit of the propaganda department of China. In December 2014, the documents were published by the Xialan blogger, but so far no one has tried to analyze the entire data array. Almost the entire correspondence of officials of the department for 2013 and 2014 got into the archive. More than half of the letters turned out to be addressed to professional trolls, or received from them. With the help of correspondence, scientists managed to track almost 44 thousand posts written by trolls.
The “professional trolls” were the officials themselves . Contrary to the expectations of the researchers, it turned out that most of the laudatory messages on the Internet are written by civil servants themselves (and not ordinary citizens hired as trolls, as previously thought). When checking 43.8 thousand posts, it turned out that officials left 99.3% of the records that fell into the sample. In the creation of content, employees of 200 departments were involved: tax and social services, employment services, local sports department, district court and other institutions. Scientists could not find evidence that the “professional trolls” from the “Party of 50 Certs” pay for their posts. They also did not find mentions that officials were paying for overtime work on the Internet.
Chinese trolls were kind . Scientists have refuted the common idea that the main task of “trolls” is to argue with critics of the regime. The analysis of the messages showed that their authors, as a rule, avoided discussions on difficult topics and simply wrote positive messages on social networks. Especially a lot of posts appeared in the days of important political events: for example, during the congress of the Chinese Communist Party, protests, as well as during public holidays. Scientists suggest that the task of trolls in China is not to argue with the opposition, but to "actively distract the public from criticism, difficulties and attempts to self -organize."
Trolls write a lot . Every year they leave approximately 448 million messages in Chinese social networks, scientists calculated. A little more than half of the messages (52.7%) appears on government sites, and the rest is located on social networks.
“No matter how hard the criticism is, they do not intervene to protect the government, leaders and their policy; On the contrary, it seems that they avoid complex topics at all, ”the study says (English.).