Just underway now with the marvellous @Chri5tianGoebel speaking...
https://twitter.com/GreaterChinaTue/status/1397471384700346368
Cited yesterday's protest in Nanjing as an example of how quickly news of protests in #China actually disseminate internationally vial social media (on yesterday's protest in Nanjing in which students held their principal hostage see, for example, bbc.co.uk/news/world-asi…)
Dissecting "visible and invisible components" in "repertoires of contention" (Charles Tilly 1986)-- "invisible components" include attempts to attract attention that ask supporters to spread information.
.@Chri5tianGoebel: online components are "as, if not more important as protest performance"-- by way of example, he shows photos of protestors actually facing *away* from the officials/authorities they are protesting against to record photographic evidence to post online
These can be crosslinked to video platforms, asking supporters to share/post/broadcast as widely as possible online. Increasingly, social media *is* the protest in #China, attempting to bring attention to grievances and messages more widely
Fascinating: "We used to assume that repression would raise the threshold for participation...but now repression itself [when recorded and shared online] stirs up anger and can actually incite more resistance" moving forward.
This makes the *control* of information even more critical for containing/suppressing protests in #China and elsewhere. The government has therefore, unsurprisingly, "colonised #Weibo"
When protestors are arrested in #China today, they are not arrested for protecting their rights (维权）but for violations of law like violating public order, assembling an illegal crowd, disrupting social stability, etc. @Chri5tianGoebel thus collected data on reports of arrests
or detentions on the violations of these legal frameworks focussing solely on reports of protests per se. Increasingly, propaganda on #China's #Weibo for example stresses that while protests are illegal, grievances can be pursued through legal channels
Xi Jinping's strategy of dealing with protests cannot be explained by the old paradigm of protest and repression/concessions, says
@Chri5tianGoebel, but instead by posting propaganda that assures the public that protests are illegal, but that legal measures do in fact work.
@Chri5tianGoebel, but instead by posting propaganda that assures the public that protests are illegal, but that legal measures do in fact work.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
