Accountability from Cyberspace? Scandals Exposure on Internet and Official Governance in China Chen Shuo

Department of Economics, Fudan University

Dacai Yang(“Brother Wristwatch”)

Zhengfu Lei

Does social media in China increase the accountability of the government?

Motivation• Mass media serve the critical role of watchdog in

democracies▫ Hamilton et al., (2005); Schedler (1999); Smulovitz

and Peruzzotti (2000); Brunetti and Weder (2003)

• Media in authoritarian countries have been manipulated by the government to increase its support from citizens▫ Becker (2004); Shirk (2011)

•However, great variations of media freedom exist in authoritarian regimes

Burkina Faso and Uganda (Freedom House , 2014) Vietnam (Maleskyet al.2012; Heng, 1998, 2004) China (King et al.,2012; Lorentzen, forthcoming)

Research Question•The effects of online discourse about officials’ scandals on government disciplining.

•What is the mechanism through which the information revealed online makes the government accountable?

Why China?•Hold macro-conditions constant

▫Culture▫National policy etc.

•A “clean” setting▫No national elections (Hyde and Marinov,

2012)

Background• China has experienced the booming of Internet

development with the largest number of Internet users in the world.

Weibo• Chinese version of twitter, launched in 2009 • The most popular social media in China

▫over 500 million users in 2013▫89.1% of the internet users

Data •Randomly crawl 26,608,054 posts in SINA

Weibo from Jan 1, 2011 to Jun 30, 2012

▫PMSinaMsgCrawler (http://cnpameng.com/)

Step 1:randomly crawl Weibo’s overlay

Step 2: Time Distribution of Official Position Related Posts (348,983)

Step 3: Manual Search

•547 cases about the scandals of government officials

▫230 economic issues (经济问题 )▫128 malfeasance (渎职 )▫57 sex scandals (性丑闻 )▫129 inappropriate behavior and speech (不当言行 )

malfeasance

Inappropriate behavior and speech

Findings•Scandals revealed online have different

effects on official governance in authoritarian regimes. ▫Sex scandal

No effect in democracy (Miller, 1996; Tumber and Waisbord, 2004)

Significant effect in autocracy▫Inappropriate behavior and speech

Significant effect in democracy (Kampf, 2009; Ekstrom and Johansson, 2006)

No effect in autocracy

Social media and formal media•State-controlled newspaper(机关报 )

▫Local ▫Non-local

•Commercialized newspaper (市场化报纸 )

•Internet

Reporting time difference between local and non-local newspapers

Scandals in Internet and non-local newspaper

Scandals in Internet and local newspaper

Findings•Local and non-local newspapers report

different types of online scandals

▫Non-local newspaper more likely to report malfeasance and sex

scandals▫Local newspaper

less likely to report scandals of all types

Interaction between social and formal media

Findings•Traditional media play an important role

in holding the government accountable.•The government selectively punishes

officials based on the type of scandals revealed online.

•The different patterns of reporting online scandals between local and non-local newspapers show that formal media’s check on officials’ behavior may face pressure from local governments, and thus only apply to officials in other provinces.

Rethinking the role of social media in authoritarian regimes •Optimistic view

▫ Social media play a critical role in promoting democratic transitions and good governance (Khzzaeli and Stockermer, 2013)

•Our research▫Authoritarian regimes may strategically

respond to information revealed by social media to maintain its survival (King et al.,2012; Lorentzen, forthcoming).

“Should not underestimate the role of authoritarian institutions as either”