Accountability from Cyberspace? Scandals Exposure on Internet and Official Governance in China

1. Accountability from Cyberspace? Scandals Exposure on Internet and Official Governance in China Chen Shuo Department of Economics, Fudan University

2. Dacai Yang (“Brother Wristwatch”)

5. Zhengfu Lei

8. Does social media in China increase the accountability of the government?

9. Motivation • Mass media serve the critical role of watchdog in democracies • Hamilton et al., (2005); Schedler (1999); Smulovitz and Peruzzotti (2000); Brunetti and Weder (2003) • Media in authoritarian countries have been manipulated by the government to increase its support from citizens • Becker (2004); Shirk (2011)

10. However, great variations of media freedom exist in authoritarian regimes • Burkina Faso and Uganda (Freedom House , 2014) • Vietnam(Maleskyet al.2012; Heng, 1998, 2004) • China (King et al.,2012; Lorentzen, forthcoming)

11. Research Question • The effects of online discourse about officials’ scandals on government disciplining. • What is the mechanism through which the information revealed online makes the government accountable?

12. Why China? • Hold macro-conditions constant • Culture • National policy etc. • A “clean” setting • No national elections (Hyde and Marinov, 2012)

13. Background • China has experienced the booming of Internet development with the largest number of Internet users in the world.

14. Weibo • Chinese version of twitter, launched in 2009 • The most popular social media in China • over 500 million users in 2013 • 89.1% of the internet users

16. Data • Randomly crawl 26,608,054 posts in SINA Weibo from Jan 1, 2011 to Jun 30, 2012 • PMSinaMsgCrawler (http://cnpameng.com/)

17. Step 1:randomly crawl Weibo’s overlay

18. Step 2: Time Distribution of Official Position Related Posts (348,983)

19. Step 3: Manual Search • 547 cases about the scandals of government officials • 230 economic issues (经济问题) • 128 malfeasance (渎职) • 57 sex scandals (性丑闻) • 129 inappropriate behavior and speech (不当言行)

20. malfeasance

21. Inappropriate behavior and speech

24. Findings • Scandals revealed online have different effects on official governance in authoritarian regimes. • Sex scandal • No effect in democracy (Miller, 1996; Tumber and Waisbord, 2004) • Significant effect in autocracy • Inappropriate behavior and speech • Significant effect in democracy (Kampf, 2009; Ekstrom and Johansson, 2006) • No effect in autocracy

25. Social media and formal media • State-controlled newspaper(机关报) • Local • Non-local • Commercialized newspaper (市场化报纸) • Internet

27. Reporting time difference between local and non-local newspapers

28. Scandals in Internet and non-local newspaper

29. Scandals in Internet and local newspaper

30. Findings • Local and non-local newspapers report different types of online scandals • Non-local newspaper • more likely to report malfeasance and sex scandals • Local newspaper • less likely to report scandals of all types

31. Interaction between social and formal media

34. Findings • Traditional media play an important role in holding the government accountable. • The government selectively punishes officials based on the type of scandals revealed online.

35. The different patterns of reporting online scandals between local and non-local newspapers show that formal media’s check on officials’ behavior may face pressure from local governments, and thus only apply to officials in other provinces.

36. Rethinking the role of social media in authoritarian regimes • Optimistic view • Social media play a critical role in promoting democratic transitions and good governance (Khzzaeli and Stockermer, 2013) • Our research • Authoritarian regimes may strategically respond to information revealed by social media to maintain its survival (King et al.,2012; Lorentzen, forthcoming).

37. “Should not underestimate the role of authoritarian institutions as either”