Online Criticism and Support for the Chinese Government in the Early Days of COVID-19. Lu, Y., Pan, J., & Xu, Y. 21st Century China Center Research Paper Series, December, 2020. ![Online Criticism and Support for the Chinese Government in the Early Days of COVID-19 [link]](https://bibbase.org/img/filetypes/link.svg "link")
Paper abstract bibtex Previous research has argued that exogenous shocks such as natural disasters threaten government stability. When the novel coronavirus outbreak first emerged in China, some commentators predicted that public anger would threaten the Chinese regime. By analyzing over five million original posts from Sina Weibo between December 2019 and February 2020, we find that online criticism spiked when the Chinese government announced the Wuhan lockdown, when controversies around medical supplies surfaced, and when Dr. Li Wenliang died of the disease. However, we also observe nearly parallel bursts of support for the regime during the Wuhan lockdown and death of Dr. Li Wenliang. We find no evidence of large-scale censorship of criticism. Although we cannot rule out government efforts to artificially generate approval, the support we observe is likely, at least in part, organic. These results caution against over-simplification of online public opinion in authoritarian countries and highlight a need for more precise and systematic measurement of public opinion on social media.
@article{lu_online_2020,
title = {Online {Criticism} and {Support} for the {Chinese} {Government} in the {Early} {Days} of {COVID}-19},
url = {https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3757135},
abstract = {Previous research has argued that exogenous shocks such as natural disasters threaten government stability. When the novel coronavirus outbreak first emerged in China, some commentators predicted that public anger would threaten the Chinese regime. By analyzing over five million original posts from Sina Weibo between December 2019 and February 2020, we find that online criticism spiked when the Chinese government announced the Wuhan lockdown, when controversies around medical supplies surfaced, and when Dr. Li Wenliang died of the disease. However, we also observe nearly parallel bursts of support for the regime during the Wuhan lockdown and death of Dr. Li Wenliang. We find no evidence of large-scale censorship of criticism. Although we cannot rule out government efforts to artificially generate approval, the support we observe is likely, at least in part, organic. These results caution against over-simplification of online public opinion in authoritarian countries and highlight a need for more precise and systematic measurement of public opinion on social media.},
language = {en},
urldate = {2020-12-31},
journal = {21st Century China Center Research Paper Series},
author = {Lu, Yingdan and Pan, Jennifer and Xu, Yiqing},
month = dec,
year = {2020},
keywords = {Domestic Politics, Pandemic Response},
}
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