02/18: Molly Roberts

[smiklin]

Comment below with questions or thoughts about the reading for this week's workshop.

Please make your comments by Wednesday 11:59 PM, and upvote at least five of your peers' comments on Thursday prior to the workshop. You need to use 'thumbs-up' for your reactions to count towards 'top comments,' but you can use other emojis on top of the thumbs up.

[rkcatipon]

Dr. Roberts, we're currently reading your book in an internet censorship course taught by Dr. Nick Feamster, so it's especially great to have you at our workshop!

In the How sudden censorship can increase access to information paper, you write that the gateway and Streisand effect may occur, "When increases in censorship are sudden and blunt". I couldn't help but think of the recent deplatforming of Donald Trump. Do you think moderation tactics like deplatorming and shutdowns may inadvertently trigger a Streisand effect? Given your experience with the complexities of information access, does the deplatforming of Trump fall under "coarse censorship" and if so, ado you believe this is an effective measure in stemming misinformation?

[ginxzheng]

Hi Molly, it's so blessed to have you here this week!
I found the crisis paper really interesting, especially the information-seeking comparison between democracies and autocracies. I have a question about the correlations being discussed throughout the paper. Is the "crisis" serving as a gateway or the "lockdown" itself? Since the data plots mainly pointed out the lockdown time frame, should we address the nuance between "a crisis with lockdown regulations" vs "a crisis without the lockdown", and their corresponding effects on censorship circumvention?

[Anqi-Zhou]

Thanks for your inspiring sharing! I'm not very familiar about this topic, so may ask some immature questions... Why do disproportional increases in information search about historical leaders imply that crisis create a gateway to historically sensitive information? Could this phenomenon just relate to the cultural thing? Could you please explain the logic in detail?

[bowen-w-zheng]

Thank you for presenting this week! My question is about the assumptions in the paper about censorship effect on incidental exposure to information, specifically the assumption that most people from mainland China do not use VPN. I think this assumption holds on a populational level; but I am concerned that the propensity to use vpn is highly correlated with the usuage of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is probably not the default website mainland people use to seek information and those who frequent the Wikipedia website tend to frequent other websites under censorship via VPN. If this is true, I wonder if the metrics you defined can characterise behaviours of most mainland Chinese or just a subset of people who use Wikipedia without VPN.

[Jasmine97Huang]

Thank you Dr.Roberts for presenting your studies. I found your arguments that crisis motivates information seeking which in turns incentivizes censorship circumvention very convincing. However, I am a little concerned about the evidence from VPN application and Wikipedia access. As the U.S. and the rest of the world also began to issue lockdown orders, many Chinese nationals who lived abroad have returned to China starting the beginning of 2020. These people who have studied or worked in the west might need to have VPN access, perhaps for work/school related reasons, or that they are used to/prefer Western platforms for news and social connection. Thus, it didn't surprise me that the first thing they do after returning to China is to download a VPN or Twitter/Facebook, trying to continue their daily internet routines. Additionally, there might be motivations other than information seeking that prompts an increase in politically sensitive Wikipedia view. COVID 19 pushed China
to the forefront of public discourse, naturally attracting may criticisms about its political system. Would the increasing views of Wiki pages a response to the negative political attentions that China has received?

Lastly, I would love to hear your thoughts on how China recently banned Clubhouse, a new audio-chat social media app which is still in beta, after some emotional and enthusiastic discussions around Uighurs concentration camps and other sensitive political debates on the platform.
Looking forward to the presentation!

[JadeBenson]

Thank you so much for the great research!

I am curious about how greater access to information during times of crisis affects public opinion/action against their authoritarian regimes?

In your theoretical underpinnings, you describe how censorship can be an effective tool for maintaining rule and show how information-seeking in crises undermines this mechanism. Perhaps this gateway effect could lead to increasing distrust and dissidence against authoritarian regimes. However, another lecturer this quarter (Yinxian Zhang) suggested that even during the covid crisis, popular Chinese opinions towards democracy actually decreased given the incompetent response and violence in other nations. What are your thoughts on how information access affects public opinion (and hopefully action)?

[Yutong0828]

Dr. Roberts, thank you very much for sharing your work with us! I think the way you collect the digital traces is very inspiring, like through collecting Twitter data, Wikipedia page viewed times etc.

I have a question about your paper Crisis is a Gateway to Censored Information: The Case of Coronavirus in China. I was wondering that whether you have investigated the age or identity of people who circumvent censorships, as the time between Jan and Feb is the holiday and winter vacation for university students, and because of the lockdown and COVID-19, many students or young people were not able to participate in other forms of activities and had to stay at home. Meanwhile, these people were also more likely to learn about censorship evasion, as well as more capable of managing to circumvent censorship, so once they have enough free time, they may use wikipedia and twitter to satisfy their curiosity.

So, my question is, do you think there is a causal relationship between the crisis and censorship evasion? If yes, how do you know that the evasion is not caused by the quarantine or lockdown itself? Moreover, have you considered using the data in Jan and Feb 2019 as comparison to avoid the impact of specific time period (like Chinese New Year holiday, winter vacation etc.)?

Looking forward to your presentation!

[xzmerry]

Dr. Roberts, thanks for sharing your work! I have a concern and a question about your paper Crisis is a Gateway to Censored Information: The Case of Coronavirus in China.

First, I have an ethical concern about your research. Could you talk more about how you collect and protect the information of Chinese VPN, Twitter, and Facebook users? As you know using these apps is actually illegal in China and I am worried about the fact that you could obtain and use such information, so could you please elaborate more on that? And I guess similar concerns would arise with regard to research on the Gateway effect in other countries.

Second, I have a similar question as @Yutong0828: who actually circumvented censorship during the pandemic? As censorship for domestic media becomes increasingly tight during the most serious period of the pandemic in China, some people could not discuss their political thoughts and concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic domestically and switch to media or platform outside of the firewall. So the phenomena mentioned could also be a result of temporarily tightening policy. It would be better if there could be an analysis on how active are those new users during and after the crisis. Ans as @JadeBenson has mentioned, another lecturer this quarter (Yinxian Zhang) mentioned there is an increasingly negative attitude towards democracy after the pandemic in China, I wonder how long could a Gateway effect last (such as will it lasts after the pandemic) generally?

Besides, you have mentioned that " Anxiety about the epidemic could lead consumers of information to explicitly seek out
information that has long been censored to better understand the trustworthiness of their government". So it matters who are actually the consumers of information. I feel that such a conclusion would be less convincing if those people are a small group of people who overcame the firewall generally had less trust in the government before.

Thanks for sharing again! Actually, because this topic is closely related to my life, so some questions have been around me for a long time. Looking forward to your presentation!

[yongfeilu]

Hi Dr. Roberts! Thank you very much for your presentation! Why do you choose the model to detect the pattern behind the censorship over other models? Could you please explain a bit about that? Also, I am curious how you avoid the ethical risk of privacy intrusion when collecting your data? Thank you very much!

[sabinahartnett]

Thank you for sharing your work Dr. Roberts! I was hoping you could talk a bit more about what you see as the (potential) societal impacts of the blocking of incidental consumption of information on Wikipedia. As you wrote, "People don't know what they don't know", and I'm wondering if there is any research on how this plays out in society?

[chuqingzhao]

Thank you Dr.Roberts for sharing your work! I am wondering is there any heterogeneity of the gateway effect under different types of censorship policies? What is the policy implication of the gateway effect? Without any punishment on people who circumvent the firewall, censorship might spur information seeking. Or even with punishment, the information seeking might still increase. I am curious what is the dynamic of the gateway effect and how long does the effect continues under different situations?

Also, it seems unclear the mechanism of the gateway effect. Could you please explain a bit about that? Thank you.

[alevi98]

Hi Dr. Roberts,

Thank you for attending our workshop this week! I am also in the class @rkcatipon mentioned where we are reading your book Censored. One thing I was wondering about the COVID-19 crisis as gateway paper: do you think there was any undercurrent of increased circumvention usage because of people just using the internet more frequently given the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic? Have you looked into other crisis scenarios (with vastly different contexts) and found a similar result?

Also, one thing that we talk about a lot in the internet censorship course is how so much of it goes back to porous censorship that is more subtle than simply unplugging Wikipedia. A common theme is how porous censorship is, fundamentally, symptomatic of underlying structures of power. Given their undue influence in the U.S. corporate and political spheres, how would you compare the moderation strategies of large social media companies such as Facebook, YouTube, etc. to porous censorship in authoritarian China?

Excited to learn more tomorrow!

[nwrim]

Thank you so much for presenting in our workshop!

In your Crisis is a Gateway to Censored Information paper, I found finding that Wikipedia view of historic leaders increased disproportionally in China highly interesting. However, I was hoping that I could get some additional intuition on why that happened - it looks very reasonable for people to seek information source that is censored to attain information about the crisis at hand (e.g., following Twitter accounts), but it seems strange that they access information pages that are very unlikely to hold information about the current crisis. Is there some intuition that I can follow, perhaps related to the Media dependency theory you mention in the paper?

Also, I think concerns about privacy issues and Wikipedia not being the main source of information in China also is very interesting and would like to hear opinions on this issue, too.

[a-bosko]

Dr. Roberts,

Thank you for sharing your work! It is interesting to learn about crisis and anxiety and its effect on individuals that live in highly censored environments. With limited access to information online, it seems like drastic situations drive individuals to try and circumvent censors in order to gain proper access to news.

With the "gateway effect", is it possible that the knowledge gained from bypassing censors can actually be detrimental or hurtful? In the context of psychology, would this increase anxiety and fear in individuals that are already exhibiting a crisis such as COVID?

[chrismaurice0]

Fascinating work Dr. Roberts! In Crisis is a Gateway to Censored Information you show that Russia and Iran, two countries with a similar political system as China, do not block access to Wikipedia "not act as a gateway to information about historical events or controversies, as these pages are always available to the public". And yet despite that information being easily accessible, as of today, Iran and Russia are still authoritarian countries. This begs the question, why does China continue to heavily censor its internet, especially given the negative connotation of censorship? Do you think China (specifically the CCP) would be seen as stronger leaders domestically, in China,and Worldwide if they can maintain control of the government without any censorship?