In the wake of a prostitution scandal involving a famous investor (Xue Manzi) and the trial of the former secretary of the Communist Party in Chongqing on the suspicion of corruption (Bo Xilai), the Chinese government via the People’s Daily urged popular Weibo accounts (China’s version of Twitter) that have more than a million followers (also known as 大 V (Big Verified) Weibo users) to take the national interest into account when tweeting. Read Brian Spegele’s article for China Real Time (WSJ) here.
By listening to what the population is tweeting and sometimes to act upon public outcries the Chinese government is experimenting with a selective direct digital democracy. But as the exhortation in the People’s Daily shows it wants to use the Chinese twittersphere not just passively but also actively as an instrument to influence the people.
Read Danny Friedmann, Paradoxes, Google and China – How Censorship Can Harm and Intellectual Property Can Harness Innovation in GOOGLE AND THE LAW: IT AND THE LAW, (Aurelio Lopez-Tarruella, ed., TMC Asser, 2012), here.