Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
Science. 2014 Aug 22;345(6199):1251722. doi: 10.1126/science.1251722. Epub 2014 Aug 21.
Existing research on the extensive Chinese censorship organization uses observational methods with well-known limitations. We conducted the first large-scale experimental study of censorship by creating accounts on numerous social media sites, randomly submitting different texts, and observing from a worldwide network of computers which texts were censored and which were not. We also supplemented interviews with confidential sources by creating our own social media site, contracting with Chinese firms to install the same censoring technologies as existing sites, and--with their software, documentation, and even customer support--reverse-engineering how it all works. Our results offer rigorous support for the recent hypothesis that criticisms of the state, its leaders, and their policies are published, whereas posts about real-world events with collective action potential are censored.
现有的关于广泛的中国审查制度的研究使用的是具有明显局限性的观察方法。我们通过在众多社交媒体网站上创建账户、随机提交不同的文本，并从全球计算机网络观察哪些文本被审查、哪些文本没有被审查，进行了首次大规模的审查实验研究。我们还通过创建自己的社交媒体网站、与中国公司签订合同安装与现有网站相同的审查技术，并利用他们的软件、文档，甚至客户支持，对其工作原理进行逆向工程，补充了对机密消息来源的采访。我们的研究结果为最近的假设提供了严格的支持，即对国家、其领导人及其政策的批评被发表，而具有集体行动潜力的现实世界事件的帖子则被审查。
