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Full Description
Does the Internet fundamentally change the flow of politically relevant information, even in authoritarian regimes? If so, does it alter the attitudes and behavior of citizens? While there is a fair amount of research exploring how social media has empowered social actors to challenge authoritarian regimes, there is much less addressing whether and how the state can actively shape the flow of information to its advantage. In China, for instance, citizens often resort to "rightful resistance" to lodge complaints and defend rights. By using the rhetoric of the central government, powerless citizens may exploit the slim political opportunity structure and negotiate with the state for better governance. But this tactic also reinforces the legitimacy of authoritarian states; citizens engage rightful resistance precisely because they trust the state, at least the central government, to some degree.
Drawing on original survey data and rich qualitative sources, Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies explores how authoritarian regimes employ the Internet in advantageous ways to direct the flow of online information. The authors argue that the central Chinese government successfully directs citizen dissent toward local government through critical information that the central government places online--a strategy that the authors call "directed digital dissidence". In this context, citizens engage in low-level protest toward the local government, and thereby feel empowered, while the central government avoids overthrow. Consequently, the Internet functions to discipline local state agents and to project a benevolent image of the central government and the regime as a whole. With an in-depth look at the COVID-19 and Xinjiang Cotton cases, the authors demonstrate how the Chinese state employs directed digital dissidence and discuss the impact and limitations of China's information strategy.
Contents
Chapter 1 - The China Case: Strong State, Popular Contention, and the Internet
Chapter 2 -The Chinese Internet: Citizen Awareness of Government Control
Chapter 3 - What Does Directed Digital Dissidence Look Like? Critical Information Flows, Trust, and Support for Protest
Chapter 4 - Social Media: The Battleground of the Information War
Chapter 5 - Jumping Over the Great Firewall: A Threat to the Chinese Strategy
Chapter 6 - The Digital Dissident Citizen: Who are the Wall Jumpers?
Chapter 7 - Managing the Information War: Voices Heard from Beyond the Wall are Lost
Chapter 8 - Digital Directed Dissidence in Action: Applications and its Limits
Chapter 9 - Will Digital Directed Dissidence Keep Working?
Appendices
Notes
References
Index
