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Begin New Search Topic Disinformation Author Fergus Ryan

1. Frontier influencers: the new face of China’s propaganda

Author:
Fergus Ryan, Daria Impiombato, and Hsi-Ting Pai
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This report explores how the Chinese party-state’s globally focused propaganda and disinformation capabilities are evolving and increasing in sophistication. Concerningly, this emerging approach by the Chinese party-state to influence international discourse on China, including obfuscating its record of human rights violations, is largely flying under the radar of US social media platforms and western policymakers. In the broader context of attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to censor speech, promote disinformation and seed the internet with its preferred narratives, we focus on a small but increasingly popular set of YouTube accounts that feature mainly female China-based ethnic-minority influencers from the troubled frontier regions of Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia, hereafter referred to as ‘frontier influencers’ or ‘frontier accounts’. Despite being blocked in China, YouTube is seen by the CCP as a key battlefield in its ideological contestation with the outside world, and YouTube’s use in foreign-facing propaganda efforts has intensified in recent years. Originally deployed on domestic video-sharing platforms to meet an internal propaganda need, frontier-influencer content has since been redirected towards global audiences on YouTube as part of the CCP’s evolving efforts to counter criticisms of China’s human rights problems and burnish the country’s image. Alongside party-state media and foreign vloggers, these carefully vetted domestic vloggers are increasingly seen as another key part of Beijing’s external propaganda arsenal. Their use of a more personal style of communication and softer presentation is expected to be more convincing than traditional party-state media content, which is often inclined towards the more rigid and didactic. For the CCP, frontier influencers represent, in the words of one Chinese propaganda expert, ‘guerrillas or militia’ fighting on the flanks in ‘the international arena of public opinion’, while party-state media or the ‘regular army’ ‘charge, kill and advance on the frontlines’. The frontier accounts we examine in this report were predominantly created in 2020–21 and feature content that closely hews to CCP narratives, but their less polished presentation has a more authentic feel that conveys a false sense of legitimacy and transparency about China’s frontier regions that party-state media struggle to achieve. For viewers, the video content appears to be the creation of the individual influencers, but is in fact what’s referred to in China as ‘professional user generated content’, or content that’s produced with the help of special influencer-management agencies known as multi-channel networks (MCNs). For the mostly young and female Uyghur, Tibetan and other ethnic-minority influencers we examine in this report, having such an active presence on a Western social media platform is highly unusual, and ordinarily would be fraught with danger. But, as we reveal, frontier influencers are carefully vetted and considered politically reliable. The content they create is tightly circumscribed via self-censorship and oversight from their MCNs and domestic video platforms before being published on YouTube. In one key case study, we show how frontier influencers’ content was directly commissioned by the Chinese party-state. Because YouTube is blocked in China, individual influencers based in the country aren’t able to receive advertising revenue through the platform’s Partner Program, which isn’t available there. But, through their arrangements with YouTube, MCNs have been able to monetise content for frontier influencers, as well as for hundreds of other China-based influencers on the platform. Given that many of the MCNs have publicly committed to promote CCP propaganda, this arrangement results in a troubling situation in which MCNs are able to monetise their activities, including the promotion of disinformation, via their access to YouTube’s platform. The use of professionally supported frontier influencers also appears to be aimed at ensuring that state-backed content ranks well in search results because search-engine algorithms tend to prioritise fresh content and channels that post regularly. From the CCP’s perspective, the continuous flooding of content by party-state media, foreign influencers and professionally supported frontier influencers onto YouTube is aimed at outperforming other more critical but stale content. This new phenomenon reflects a continued willingness, identified in previous ASPI ICPC reports,1 by the Chinese party-state to experiment in its approach to shaping online political discourse, particularly on those topics that have the potential to disrupt its strategic objectives. By targeting online audiences on YouTube through intermediary accounts managed by MCNs, the CCP can hide its affiliation with those influencers and create the appearance of ‘independent’ and ‘authoritative’ voices supporting its narratives, including disinformation that it’s seeking to propagate globally. This report (on page 42) makes a series of policy recommendations, including that social media platforms shouldn’t allow MCNs who are conducting propaganda and disinformation work on behalf of the Chinese party-state to monetise their activities or be recognised by the platforms as, for example, official partners or award winners. This report also recommends that social media platforms broaden their practice of labelling the accounts of state media, agencies and officials to include state-linked influencers from the People’s Republic of China.
Topic:
Cybersecurity, Social Media, Propaganda, and Disinformation
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2. #StopXinjiang Rumors: The CCP’s decentralised disinformation campaign

Author:
Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Albert Zhang, and Jacob Wallis
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
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 attempted to shape international perceptions about Xinjiang, among other themes. Despite evidence to the contrary, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) denies committing human rights abuses in the region and has mounted multifaceted and multiplatform information campaigns to deny accusations of forced labour, mass detention, surveillance, sterilisation, cultural erasure and alleged genocide in the region. Those efforts have included using Western social media platforms to both push back against and undermine media reports, research and Uyghurs’ testimony about Xinjiang, as well as to promote alternative narratives. In the datasets we examined, inauthentic and potentially automated accounts using a variety of image and video content shared content aimed at rebutting the evidence of human rights violations against the Uyghur population. Likewise, content was shared using fake Uyghur accounts and other shell accounts promoting video ‘testimonials’ from Uyghurs talking about their happy lives in China. Our analysis includes two datasets removed by Twitter: Dataset 1: ‘Xinjiang Online’ (CNHU) consisted of 2,046 accounts and 31,269 tweets. Dataset 2: ‘Changyu Culture’ (CNCC) consisted of 112 accounts and 35,924 tweets. The networks showed indications of being linked by theme and tactics; however, neither achieved significant organic engagement on Twitter overall—although there was notable interaction with the accounts of CCP diplomats. There were signs of old accounts being repurposed, whether purchased or stolen, and little attempt to craft authentic personas. Twitter has attributed both datasets to the Chinese government, the latter dataset is specifically linked to a company called Changyu Culture, which is connected to the Xinjiang provincial government. This attribution was uncovered by ASPI ICPC in the report Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: the CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms.
Topic:
Human Rights, Diaspora, Social Media, Disinformation, Misinformation, and Twitter
Political Geography:
China, United States of America, and Xinjiang

3. Borrowing mouths to speak on Xinjiang

Author:
Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Nathan Ruser, Albert Zhang, and Daria Impiombato
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
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 supported influencers in the creation of social media content in Xinjiang, as well as amplified influencer content that supports pro-CCP narratives. That content broadly seeks to debunk Western media reporting and academic research, refute statements by foreign governments and counter allegations of widespread human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Often, such content is then promoted by party-state media and diplomatic accounts across major international social media networks and in Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) briefings. This trend is particularly notable given the difficulty faced by journalists reporting in Xinjiang. Our research also examines how the CCP’s use of foreign influencers presents a growing challenge to global social media platforms, and in particular their efforts to identify and label state-affiliated accounts. This report focuses on the promotion of foreign influencers who disseminate content about Xinjiang on US-based social media and content networks, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as on Chinese platforms such as Bilibili. The report analyses this unique online influencer ecosystem and examines three in-depth case studies with a focus on Xinjiang-focused foreign influencer content and the amplification of that content by Chinese state entities. The Chinese party-state continues to deny allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including forced labour, mass detention and cultural erasure. Previous work by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has found Chinese party-state entities using US social media networks in an effort to create greater ambiguity about the situation in Xinjiang, push a counter-narrative and amplify disinformation. It has also found that the CCP uses tactics, including leveraging US social media platforms, to criticise and smear Uyghur victims, journalists and researchers who work on this topic, as well as their organisations. Other tactics have included temporal and narrative alignment between pro-CCP social media influencers and state entities (for example, targeting the BBC over its reporting on allegations of systematic rape in Xinjiang’s internment camps, among other stories) as well as the amplification of content that depicts Uyghurs as broadly supportive of the Chinese Government’s policies in Xinjiang.
Topic:
Social Media, Propaganda, Disinformation, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Influencers
Political Geography:
China and Xinjiang