Beyond disinformation: The role of Chinese political commentators on Twitter
Date:
Together with Professor Kristin Shi-Kupfer I talked about our research on Chinese current affairs commentators on Twitter. The talk was part of the 2024 Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in Seattle, WA, USA.
Chinese accounts on global social media like Twitter are often linked/limited to the spreading of mis/disinformation. However, there are non-party-state affiliated Chinese political commentators who provide diverse information and interpretations/perspectives on current affairs. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly considering them to be a threat to “political security” – as the latest arrest of the prominent blogger Ruan Xiaohuan, known by his pen name “ProgramThink” has demonstrated.
Our study provides a mixed-method empirical analysis of non-institutional Chinese current affairs communicators shaping content and narratives in a contested global media space like Twitter. Using a dataset of 2,9 mil. tweets of 99 accounts, we used the BERTopic topic modeling algorithm to identify the most prominent topics in a 12-month (2022) time frame. We then manually coded a random sample of the TOP10 topics to identify type of content and key narratives. Through a machine learning approach, we extrapolate this coding to the full dataset. Results from semi-structured interviews with two dozen Chinese political commentators in the United States complement findings from the content analysis.
According to our findings, although Chinese current affairs commentators tweet mostly about China-related topics, they are also concerned about international affairs and topics in their state of residence, choosing a diverse set of communication roles aiming to interact with both Chinese within the PRC as well as abroad, and non-Chinese actors shaping China-related affairs.
