Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T16:56:33.490Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How Chinese Officials Use the Internet to Construct Their Public Image

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2017

Jennifer Pan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Chinese regime has launched a number of online government transparency initiatives to increase the volume of publicly available information about the activities of lower-level governments. By analyzing online content produced by local government officials to fulfill these transparency requirements—a random sample of 1.92 million county-level government web pages—this paper shows how websites are commandeered by local-level officials to construct their public image. The majority of content on government websites emphasizes either the competence or benevolence of county executives, depending on where leaders are in the political tenure cycle. Early tenure county executives project images of benevolence by emphasizing their attentiveness and concern toward citizens. Late tenure executives project images of competence by highlighting their achievements. These findings shift the nature of debates concerning the role of the Internet in authoritarian regimes from a focus on regime–society interactions to an examination of dynamics among regime insiders. By focusing on communication and the flow of information between upper-level leaders and lower-level regime agents, this paper reveals how the Internet becomes a vehicle of self-promotion for local politicians.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 197 - 213
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Jennifer Pan, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, Building 120, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 ([email protected]). The author thanks to Chris Adolph, Emily Beaulieu, Sheena Chestnut-Greitens, Jared Chung, Jorge Domingeuz, Adam Glynn, Shelby Grossman, Shanto Iyengar, Kyle Jaros, Gary King, Burt Monroe, Jean Oi, Elizabeth Perry, Amanda Pinkston, Molly Roberts, Arthur Spirling, and Andrew Walder for many helpful comments and suggestions, as well as a number of research associates for their work on this project. The authors is also grateful to the team and for the infrastructure at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2017.15

References

Blei, David M., Ng, Andrew, and Jordan, Michael. 2003. ‘Latent Dirichlet Allocation’. JMLR 3:993–1022.Google Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2004. ‘Irresponsible State: Local Cadres and Image-Building in China’. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 20(4):20–41.Google Scholar
Chang, Chih-Chung, and Lin, Chih-Jen. 2011. ‘LIBSVM: A Library for Support Vector Machines’. ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST) 2(3):27.Google Scholar
Chen, Jidong, Pan, Jennifer, and Xu, Yiqing. 2016. ‘Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China’. American Journal of Political Science 60(2):383–400.Google Scholar
Diamond, Larry. 2010. ‘Liberation Technology’. Journal of Democracy 21(3):69–83.Google Scholar
Dimitrov, Martin K. 2014. ‘What the Party Wanted to Know Citizen Complaints as a “Barometer of Public Opinion” in Communist Bulgaria’. East European Politics & Societies 28(2):271–295.Google Scholar
Earl, Jennifer, and Kimport, Katrina. 2011. Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Edin, Maria. 2003. ‘State Capacity and Local Agent Control in China: CPP Cadre Management from a Township Perspective’. China Quarterly 173:35–52.Google Scholar
Edmond, Chris. 2013. ‘Information Manipulation, Coordination, and Regime Change’. The Review of Economic Studies 80:1422–58.Google Scholar
Grimmer, Justin, Messing, Solomon, and Westwood, Sean. 2012. ‘How Words and Money Cultivate a Personal Vote: The Effect of Legislator Credit Claiming on Constituent Credit Allocation’. American Political Science Review 106(4):703–719.Google Scholar
Guo, Gang. 2009. ‘China’s Local Political Budget Cycles’. American Journal of Political Science 53(3):621–632.Google Scholar
Hopkins, Daniel J., and King, Gary. 2010. ‘A Method of Automated Nonparametric Content Analysis for Social Science’. American Journal of Political Science 54(1):229–247.Google Scholar
Horsley, Jamie. 2007. ‘China Adopts First Nationwide Open Government Information Regulations’.Available online: https://law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Ch_China_Adopts_1st_OGI_Regulations.pdf. Accessed January 7, 2016.Google Scholar
Howard, Philip N., Aiden Duffy, Deen Freelon, Muzammil Hussain, Will Mari, and Marwa Mazaid. 2011. ‘Opening Closed Regimes: What Was the Role of Social Media during the Arab Spring?’ Seattle, WA: Project on Information Technology and Political Islam.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, and McGrady, Jennifer. 2007. Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide . New York: WW Norton.Google Scholar
Jiang, Min, and Xu, Heng. 2009. ‘Exploring Online Structures on Chinese Government Portals: Citizen Political Participation and Government Legitimation’. Social Science Computer Review 27(2):174–195.Google Scholar
Kalathil, Shanthi, and Boas, Taylor C.. 2010. Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Google Scholar
Kernell, Samuel. 2006. Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Kung, James Kai-Sing, and Chen, Shou. 2013. ‘Do Land Revenue Windfalls Reduce the Career Incentives of County Leaders? Evidence from China’. Available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2291081. Accessed January 7, 2016.Google Scholar
Li, Hongbin, and Zhou, Li-An. 2005. ‘Political Turnover and Economic Performance: The Incentive Role of Personnel Control in China’. Journal of Public Economics 89(9):1743–1762.Google Scholar
Liu, Mingxing, and Tao, Ran. 2007. ‘Local Governance, Policy Mandates, and Fiscal Reform in China’. In Vivienne Shue and Christine Wong (eds), Paying for Progress in China: Public Finance, Human Welfare, and Changing Patters of Inequality , 167–189. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lorentzen, Peter. 2013. ‘Regularizing Rioting: Permitting Protest in an Authoritarian Regime’. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 8(2):127–158.Google Scholar
Ma, Liang. 2014. ‘Gongmin shiyong zhengfu wangzhan de yingxiang yinsu: Zhonggup da chengshi de diaocha yanjiu (Factors affecting the use of government websites by citizens: survey of metropolitan areas).’ Dianzi Zhengwu (E-Government) 4:34–48.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Rebecca. 2012. Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Mayhew, David. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Meng, Tianguang, Pan Jennifer, and Ping Yang. 2017. ‘Conditional Receptivity to Citizen Participation: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in China.’ Comparative Political Studies 50(4):399–433.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Kevin, and Li, Lianjiang. 1999. ‘Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China’. Comparative Politics 31(2):167–186.Google Scholar
Pan, Jennifer. 2017. ‘Replication Data For: How Chinese Officials Use the Internet to Construct Their Public Image’. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/2HTWSU. Accessed January 7, 2016.Google Scholar
Qin, Bei, Strömberg, David, and Wu, Yanhui. 2015. ‘The Political Economy of Social Media in China’. Working Paper.Google Scholar
Qin, Bei, Strömberg, David, and Wu, Yanhui. 2016. ‘Media Bias in China’. Working Paper.Google Scholar
Seifert, Jeffrey, and Jongpil, Chung. 2009. ‘Using E-Government to Reinforce Government–Citizen Relationships: Comparing Government Reform in the United States and China’. Social Science Computer Review 27(3):3–23.Google Scholar
Tullock, Gordon. 1987. Autocracy. Lancaster and Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
United Nations. 2012. ‘E-Government Survey 2012: E-Government for the People’. Available at http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan048065.pdf. Accessed January 7, 2016.Google Scholar
Whiting, Susan. 2004. ‘The Cadre Evaluation System at the Grass Roots: The Paradox of Party Rule’. In Dali Yang and Barry Naughton (eds), Holding China Together: Diversity and National Integration in the Post-Deng Era, 101–119. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wintrobe, Ronald. 1998. The Political Economy of Dictatorship. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yiannakis, Diana Evans. 1982. ‘House Members Communication Styles: Newsletters and Press Releases’. Journal of Politics 44(4):1049–1071.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Pan dataset

Dataset

http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/2HTWSU
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Pan supplementary material

Appendix

Download Pan supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 836.1 KB