Chinese online censorship targets "collective action" posts

For years, it’s been conventional wisdom that the Chinese government does not tolerate online speech against the state and that Beijing employs a massive surveillance, filtration, takedown, and propaganda regime to counter all that happens online. But new academic research from Harvard suggests that China’s filtration policy may be more complex, and oddly, more open than had been previously thought.

"Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content," write Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts in their paper. King is a professor of social science and the latter two are doctoral candidates. "Censorship is oriented toward attempting to forestall collective activities that are occurring now or may occur in the future—and, as such, seem to clearly expose government intent, such as examples we offer where sharp increases in censorship presage government action outside the Internet."