Censorship, anti-censorship, and self-censorship in an authoritarian regime have been extensively studies, yet the relationship between these intertwined factors is not well understood. In this paper, we report results of a large-scale survey study (N = 526) with Sina Weibo users toward bridging this research gap. Through descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and regression analysis, we uncover how users are being censored, how and why they conduct self-censorship on different topics and in different scenarios (i.e., post, repost, and comment), and their various anti-censorship strategies. We further identify the metrics of censorship and self-censorship, find the influence factors, and construct a mediation model to measure their relationship. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for democratic social media design and future censorship research.
翻译:独裁政权的检查、反检查和自我检查受到广泛的研究,然而,这些相互交织的因素之间的关系却还没有得到很好的理解。在本文中,我们报告了与Sina Weibo用户进行的一项大规模调查研究(N=526)的结果,以弥合这一研究差距。通过描述性统计、相关分析和回归分析,我们发现用户是如何被审查的,他们是如何和为什么在不同主题和不同情景(例如,后期、后期和评论)以及各种反检查战略中进行自我检查的。我们进一步确定了检查和自我检查的衡量标准,发现了影响因素,并构建了一个衡量其关系的调解模式。基于这些发现,我们讨论了民主社会媒体设计和未来审查研究对民主社会媒体设计的影响。