commbox East Asia

#StopXinjiang Rumors: The CCP’s Decentralised Disinformation Campaign

Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Albert Zhang, Jacob Wallis

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), International Cyber Policy Centre (2021), 50 pp.

"This report analyses two Chinese state-linked networks seeking to influence discourse about Xinjiang across platforms including Twitter and YouTube. This activity targeted the Chinese-speaking diaspora as well as international audiences, sharing content in a variety of languages. Both networks atte ... more

Special Report for 2021 Frankfurt Book Fair

China Publishers (2021), 44 pp.

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GFWatch: A Longitudinal Measurement Platform Built to Monitor China’s DNS Censorship at Scale

Nguyen Phong Hoang

University of Toronto, Citizenlab (2021)

"China’s sophisticated filtering system, known as the Great Firewall (GFW), is the region’s biggest impediment to thefreedom of information. The GFW is built by the Chinese government and is continuously developed to serve theirpolitical interests. In this report, we introduce the design of GFWa ... more

China’s Digital Silk Road in Africa and the Future of Internet Governance

Henry Tugendhat, Julia Voo

Washington, DC: China Africa Research Initiative (CARI);Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) (2021), 4 pp.

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Digital Transformations of the Public Arena

Andreas Jungherr, Ralph Schroeder

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2021), 75 pp.

"Digital technologies have changed the public arena, but there is little scholarly consensus about how they have done so. This Element lays out a new framework for the digitally mediated public arena by identifying structural changes and continuities with the pre-digital era. It examines three count ... more

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"Prosecute Them with Awesome Power": China’s Crackdown on Tengdro Monastery and Restrictions on Communications in Tibet

Human Rights Watch (2021), 63 pp.

"This report provides the first detailed account of the raid on the Tengdro monastery and its consequences, including multiple detentions and a suicide, that has appeared in any media within or outside China. It also provides analysis of what the case shows about conditions in Tibet today and assess ... more

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Digital News Report 2021
Top Insights

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Anne Schulz, Simge Andi, Craig T. Robertson, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2021), 163 pp.

"This year's report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 92,000 online news consumers in 46 markets including India, Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria, Colombia and Peru for the first time. The report looks at the impact of coronavirus on news consumption a ... more

The COVID-19 Story: Unmasking China's Global Strategy

Louisa Lim, Julia Bergin, Johan Lidberg

International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) (2021), 7 pp.

"China has used Covid to benefit its global image through the activation of existing media dissemination channels overseas and the use of new tactics such as disinformation and misinformation. China’s largescale medical diplomacy campaign has also provided propaganda wins in many developing countr ... ies, burnishing Beijing’s image as a reliable partner. Anecdotal reports indicate that Beijing has stepped up its content offerings, in particular by tailoring content including disinformation for specific countries and translating state-run messages into local languages. In some countries, China was also seen as the purveyor of the most accurate information about the new coronavirus, showing its growing influence over global narratives. For Beijing, Covid diplomacy clearly offers another means through which it can exert its influence. This research shows that countries that are recipients of China’s Covid vaccine clearly have more positive coverage of China, but it cannot draw conclusions as to the factors behind that. This strategy has largely been acceptable to global journalists, who — judging by the results of our focus groups in three separate countries — do not perceive China’s advances as a threat at a national level. Such views are in part due to the incremental nature of the changes, the clumsiness of China’s propaganda effort and the irrelevance of much of the material provided to local audiences. However, the survey does reveal that when viewed globally, there does appear to be more concern about China’s influence, in particular in the Asia Pacific region. The survey indicates that the overall impact of Beijing’s outreach is a redrawing of the global media landscape — one story at a time, one country at a time — shifting the China coverage in a more positive direction. China is using a multi-pronged approach to redraw the information landscape to benefit its own global image. In 2020, Beijing effectively shut down journalistic access to China, through visa denials and freezes, partly driven by international border closures. This had the effect of creating a vacuum in China coverage, creating a demand for stories from China, which could then be filled with statesponsored content already available through content-sharing agreements." (Conclusions, page 7) more

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Borrowing Mouths to Speak on Xinjiang

Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Nathan Ruser et al.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), International Cyber Policy Centre (2021), 40 pp.

"This report explores how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses foreign social media influencers to shape and push messages domestically and internationally about Xinjiang that are aligned with its own preferred narratives. Our research has found key instances in which Chinese state entities have s ... more

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Movie Minorities: Transnational Rights Advocacy and South Korean Cinema

Hye Seung Chung, David Scott Diffrient

New Brunswick et al.: Rutgers University Press (2021), ix, 301 pp.

"Rights advocacy has become a prominent facet of South Korea’s increasingly transnational motion picture output, especially following the 1998 presidential inauguration of Kim Dae-jung, a former political prisoner and victim of human rights abuses who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. Today ... more

China’s Cyber Vision: How the Cyberspace Administration of China is Building a New Consensus on Global Internet Governance

Nathan Attrill, Audrey Fritz

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), International Cyber Policy Centre (2021), 19 pp.

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Television in Africa in the Digital Age

Gilbert Motsaathebe, Sarah H. Chiumbu (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2021), xxi, 295 pp.

"This book places television in Africa in the digital context. It addresses the onslaught of multimedia platforms, digital migration and implication of this technology for society. The discussions in the chapters contained in this book encompass a wide range of issues such as digital disruption of t ... more

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Buchmarkt China 2021

Deutsches Buchinformationszentrum Peking (2021), 40 pp.

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Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific: Music, Media, and Technology

Lonán Ó Briain, Min-Yen Ong (eds.)

New York City: Bloomsbury Academic (2021), 272 pp.

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Restrictions on Online Freedom of Expression in China: The Domestic, Regional and International Implications of China’s Policies and Practices

Harriet Moynihan, Champa Patel

London: Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs (2021), 21 pp.

Regardless of Frontiers: Global Freedom of Expression in a Troubled World
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Lee C. Bollinger, Agnès Callamard (eds.)

New York: Columbia University Press (2021), xxiv, 409 pp.

"This volume brings together leading experts from a variety of fields to critically evaluate the extent to which global norms on freedom of expression and information have been established and which actors and institutions have contributed to their diffusion. The contributors also consider ongoing a ... more

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Beyond Journalistic Norms: Role Performance and News in Comparative Perspective

Claudia Mellado (ed.)

New York; London: Routledge (2021), xix, 299 pp.

"The book brings together scholars from Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia, reporting findings based on data collected from democratic, transitional, and non-democratic contexts to produce thematic chapters that address how journalistic cultures vary around the globe, ... more

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