{"id":94913,"date":"2016-06-20T11:38:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T09:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=94913"},"modified":"2016-06-20T11:39:34","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T09:39:34","slug":"this-is-why-the-chinese-government-is-secretly-publishing-448-million-social-media-posts-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/94913-this-is-why-the-chinese-government-is-secretly-publishing-448-million-social-media-posts-a-year","title":{"rendered":"This is why the Chinese government is secretly publishing 448 million social media posts a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chinese government fakes 448 million<\/strong> social media posts a year, according to a\u00a0study <\/a><\/strong>by Harvard data scientists.<\/p>\n

This forms part of a strategy by the Chinese government to create the appearance of viral outbursts of Web activity and distract from topics related to actual or potential collective action.<\/p>\n

“The prevailing belief among journalists, academics, and activists, he said, has been that the government maintains an aggressive social media strategy that actively rebuts anti-government posts and tries to cast opponents, whether domestic or foreign, institutional or individual, in a negative light” said Gary King, the Albert J. Weatherhead III University professor who carried out the research.<\/p>\n

“In fact, such posts make up a tiny minority, the researchers found. Most qualify as ‘cheerleading’ – praise for the government and items on revolutionary history, national holidays, and other patriotic themes.”<\/p>\n

“In short,” King said, “the government is trying to distract people and defuse tension over fraught issues.”<\/p>\n

All of the names used give the appearance of ordinary people, so it is also almost impossible to tell if the post is coming from a bot unless you are specifically looking for them.<\/p>\n

You can read more about the study here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n

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The Chinese government fakes 448 million social media posts a year, according to a new study by Harvard data scientists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":94915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,20],"tags":[31,1911,199,19403,19107,15725,177],"class_list":["post-94913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-features","tag-active","tag-china","tag-facebook","tag-harvard","tag-instagram","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94913"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95015,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94913\/revisions\/95015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}