During normal times Chinese citizens may be content to browse within the firewall—the digital barricade the state has built to block sensitive online content. But a crisis can change incentives
inspired Chinese citizens to circumvent censorship and access sensitive content on banned websites. Although mostapplications are blocked in China, the researchers found one available on China’s Apple App Store. They noted a sharp increase in downloads of the app, sending its App Store ranking higher, just as Wuhan, and the wider Hubei province of which it is part, went into lockdown . This, say the authors, opened a gateway to other politically taboo information.
Twitter, for example, is banned in China. But in Hubei the number of Chinese-language accounts geo-tagged, or assigned a location, in China grew by 40% between January and mid-March 2020, when the lockdown was lifted. By July activity was still 10% higher than in January. Hubei, the area worst hit by covid-19, gained more users than any other Chinese province. Twitter volume there doubled from its pre-lockdown average.
The new Twitterati flocked to Chinese citizen journalists, who gained 42% more China-based followers between December 2019 and April 2020, as well as to foreign media and political activists . By contrast Chinese politicians, entertainers and state media saw no significant increase. This trend was sustained: one year after the pandemic began roughly 90% of these new Twitter-joiners were still following accounts that were likely to disseminate politically sensitive information.
Activity on the Chinese-language edition of Wikipedia tells a similar story. Its daily page views increased from 12.8m in December 2019 to 13.9m during the lockdown period between January and March 2020. The trend continued even after the lockdown was lifted, with daily page views reaching 14.7m by the end of April 2020.
Wikipedia pages on covid saw the largest increases. But traffic also jumped on the pages for Xu Zhiyong, a human-rights lawyer awaiting trial for subversion; Tibetan Uprising Day; Ai Weiwei, an activist artist; and the bloody crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. During normal times Chinese citizens may be content to browse within the firewall. But a crisis can change incentives.
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