Dal gossip al dilagare dell'informazione online. Le mutevoli strategie di controllo di Internet nella RPC = From online rumors to overflowing online information. The mutual strategy of the Chinese Internet control

Abstract

The proposed article analyzes three strategies implemented by the Chinese government related to the public opinion and Chinese Internet governance. The first one is intended to limit the circulation of online rumors; the second aims to control and influence the flows of information and debate against the government; and the third to increase the overflow of online information. The first strategy will be analyzed through the presentation of a case study that is the implementation of the real name registration system, supported by the Chinese government in order to limit the spread of online rumors. The Chinese government directly imposed to private companies to adopt this system that asks all the users to provide their personal ID before logging into the service limiting the freedom of people to support the circulation of harmful content. The second strategy is aimed to safeguard a more accurate control on online content, but also to limit the circulation of parodies, puns, neologism and forms of resistance to the central government. This second strategy will be analyzed taking in example the implementation of a gaming system. The gaming effect was supported by some companies in order to better control the online users activities: users can improve their online reputation reporting the misconduct of other micro bloggers. The third strategy sees the Chinese government started to hire people (the so called fifty cents Party) in order to comment positively Chinese government’s actions, increasing the online cacophony and covering negative posts. The goal of this paper is to show the complexity and the variable ideologies of the Chinese Internet government in terms of Internet governance.