COVID-19 Increased Censorship Circumvention and Access to Sensitive Topics in China
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 4 (January 25, 2022): e2102818119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2
10 Pages Posted: 29 Dec 2020 Last revised: 6 Feb 2022
Date Written: January 25, 2022
Abstract
Crisis motivates people to track news closely, and this increased engagement can expose individuals to politically sensitive information unrelated to the initial crisis. We use the case of the COVID-19 outbreak in China to examine how crisis affects information seeking in countries that normally exert significant control over access to media. The crisis spurred censorship circumvention and access to international news and political content on websites blocked in China. Once individuals circumvented censorship, they not only received more information about the crisis itself but also accessed unrelated information that the regime has long censored. Using comparisons to democratic and other authoritarian countries also affected by early outbreaks, the findings suggest that people blocked from accessing information most of the time might disproportionately and collectively access that long-hidden information during a crisis. Evaluations resulting from this access, negative or positive for a government, might draw on both current events and censored history.
Keywords: China, Media, Censorship, Coronavirus
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