The government of China manufactures about 488 million fake posts on social media sites every year. This astounding number is almost the same amount as the number of tweets on a global scale. This is one of the government’s mass initiatives to control the reach of social media and keep citizens cushioned from bad news and sensitive political debates.
A team of researchers led by Gary King, a political scientist at Harvard University, conducted a study to understand how Chinese internet propaganda works. The social media posters are also called the Fifty Cent Party as they are believed to be paid 50 cents (in Chinese currency) by the Chinese government for each post they make.
Though the perception of the Chinese may differ, the Fifty Cent Party does not engage in debates and social jousts with government bodies. Instead, its focus is to distract the public and draw its attention away from sensitive topics by emphasizing on the work done by the Communist Party and boosting the Party’s image.
The simple trick is to change the subject rather than invite more argument and have something blown out of proportion. While those who make thee posts are rumoured to be regular citizens, those who understand Chinese politics well know that the posters are more likely to work for government agencies. It won’t come as a surprise if they worked in tax and human resource departments, and at courts.
Another interesting thing is that these people may not even get paid for their posts, this was simply a part of their job duties. The reason for calling them Fifty Cent Party is basically used as an offensive act which means that they can be bought off for a low price.
About half of these positive messages feature on government sites, and the remaining are introduced into the 80 billion social media post stream that make up the Chinese Internet. This implies that one in every 178 posts on micro blogs is planted by the government.
