We (Can’t) Chat: “709 Crackdown” Discussions Blocked on Weibo and WeChat

Abstract

This report analyzes the information control practices related to a national crackdown on Chinese rights lawyers and activists on two leading Chinese social media networks. We document the Search filtering on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, as well as keyword and image censorship on WeChat, the most popular chat app in China.

Description

Data visualization by Andrew Hilts. We are sincerely grateful to Professor Ron Deibert, Sarah McKune, Jason Q. Ng, Adam Senft and Irene Poetranto for supervision, research assistance and insightful reviews.

Keywords

censorship, China, WeChat, Weibo

Citation

Lotus Ruan, Jeffrey Knockel, and Masashi Crete-Nishihata. “We (Can’t) Chat: ‘709 Crackdown’ Discussions Blocked on Weibo and WeChat,” Citizen Lab Research Report No. 91, University of Toronto, April 2017.

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Creative Commons

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

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