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Slacktivist USA and Authoritarian China? Comparing Two Political Public Spheres With a Random Sample of Social Media Users
Author(s) -
Bolsover Gillian
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
policy and internet
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.281
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 1944-2866
DOI - 10.1002/poi3.186
Subject(s) - public sphere , authoritarianism , politics , social media , china , the internet , sample (material) , sociology , limiting , media studies , political science , internet privacy , public relations , computer science , democracy , world wide web , law , engineering , mechanical engineering , chemistry , chromatography
The rise of social media has put back on the agenda questions about the Internet's potential as an online public sphere, particularly in authoritarian states. However, random samples have never been employed to investigate political speech on social media, necessarily limiting knowledge. This article presents an analysis of political speech based on a random sample of more than 1,000 active U.S. Twitter users and Chinese Weibo users collected in late 2014. Political speech by ordinary users was found to be more frequent on both platforms than expected—9.4 percent on Weibo and 6.8 percent on Twitter—lending support to hopes of an online public sphere. However, existing powerholders make up around a fifth of U.S. Twitter accounts, and political speech acts by ordinary U.S. Twitter users are largely “slacktivist” in nature. In contrast, 98 percent of active accounts on Weibo belong to ordinary users, with active political speech making up more than 1 in 50 posts by these users. Although they largely fall within the bounds of what is permitted by the Chinese state, these findings point to the potential of the Internet as a (limited) public sphere in China, while raising questions about its contribution to political processes in the United States.