Tracking Censorship on WeChat's Public Accounts Platform

Authoritarian regimes have been ambivalent about Internet technology and have reacted with varying degrees of sophistication to shaping online public opinion.2 On the one hand, regimes—particularly of the one-party kind—with a long experience of managing the media through well-institutionalized “departments of propaganda” have recognized that the web can be a source of regime legitimation,3 provided that they deploy sufficient efforts to sanitize its contents while offering a range of appealing online activities4 or media content5 to their population. On the other hand, the corrosive political impact of uncontrolled and decentralized information is evident when web-activism turns into a social movement or helps diffuse information to the population.6 7 When confronted with major political challenges, autocrats have gone so far as shutting down all Internet services, as in Egypt during the demonstrations leading to the downfall of the Mubarak regime, or in Xinjiang when the regional authorities shut both the Internet and cellular phone service for months after ethnic riots in Urumqi erupted in July 2009. More targeted responses by authorities in China include building the so-called Great Firewall to deny mainland users access to certain foreign websites,8 9 supporting “50 Cent Party” members to post pro-China online comments,10 and detaining online bloggers,11 among others.