UC San Diego

The Internet has fundamentally changed society and the way people communicate with one another. Advances in technology have made it possible for virtually anyone to create and distribute information. Social media has given voice to the formerly marginalized, allowing them to express themselves to populations worldwide at the click or tap of a button. Authoritarian governments now find themselves in a ``many-to-many'' communication model of the world, where the government no longer holds a monopoly on information.

I use the examples of prefectural-level police accounts to show in this dissertation how the Chinese government is adapting to this new state of the world. Since it must compete with the plethora of voices on social media, it has learned to mimic the styles and adopt the language of social media users. Over time, police accounts have allocated more of their posting volume to non-police topics and have increasingly applied softer styles to their posts. This strategy appears to be paying dividends for the police, as the posts that have softer styles and are not about police topics tend to get forwarded more often.

The changes wrought by the Internet are not limited to just empowering more voices; the anonymity of the Internet enables the regime's second strategy: buying accounts to interact with its posts, artificially inflating the popularity of the post. Some accounts exert great effort to hide the fact that they are ``fake'' accounts, making it difficult for the outside observer to ascertain the true popularity of a post. The government can also rely on other government accounts to promote its posts.

The other appeal of purchasing forwards and likes is that it is relatively cheap. Many local governments are resource-constrained and lack the funds -- or perhaps even the inclination -- to improve the administration of their social media accounts. Compared to the costs of hiring a social media account manager or training an existing worker, just buying interactions may be much more cost-effective in the eyes of a local government.