Revealed: the digital army making hundreds of millions of social media posts singing praises of the Communist Party
US researchers carry out first deep analysis of China’s government-backed internet warriors known as the ‘50-cent gang’
It’s an open secret that China employs a veritable army of internet commentators to sing the government’s praises and attack its critics, but researchers at Harvard University in the United States say they not only have evidence this is the case, but also what Beijing’s motive is.
The team headed by Dr Gary King, one of America’s most distinguished political scientists, carried out what they describe as “the first large-scale empirical analysis” of online comments by the notorious “50-cent gang” (wumao dang) – so called in the popular but mistaken belief that this is the amount they are paid for each online post made in defence of the government.
The team examined a trove of more than 2,000 leaked emails from a district government internet propaganda office in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, dating from February 2013 to November 2014, to begin “reverse engineering online censorship in China”.
Most messages were communications between authorities and the 50-centers on their assignments and work reports.
Over a year, the researchers identified nearly 43,800 online messages posted accordingly, finding virtually all of them – more than 99 per cent – were generated by employees at more than 200 government agencies.