Though our data indicates a lower percentage of posts were being censored compared to other research into Chinese social media censorship, we emphasize that the set of posts collected is not a random sample and there are challenges with comparing our results to other studies. Overall, this collection of deleted posts serves as another set of data points in the ongoing goal to explicate the motives behind online censorship in China. After performing a systematic collection of tens of thousands of WeChat public posts, we analyze the types of content removed by WeChat on its public accounts (also known as “official accounts”) platform. We focus on how Tencent’s WeChat (aka Weixin in China), the leading mobile chat app in the country, restricts information on its public accounts platform (微信公众平台)-a growing social media blogging alternative to Sina Weibo. In this report, we examine one method of online information control by the world’s most sophisticated regulator of the Internet, China.
Much research has been done studying the relationship between media control and authoritarian regime durability. This report serves as a first attempt to identify types of content being censored on WeChat’s public accounts platform, and further research will be needed to determine actual censorship rates as well as answer other open questions.
Examples include 六四 (June 4), 太子党 (princeling), and keywords relating to Falun Gong.
This platform is similar in some ways to Weibo and has recently been the target of official scrutiny.In addition to its core chat functionality, it also has a blogging feature known as the public accounts or official accounts platform (微信公众平台). WeChat (known as Weixin in China) is a mobile application developed by China’s Tencent.