Social Media Equivalents in China
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As we know, the traditional media in China is
still heavily controlled by the government; so social media offers an opening
to let the steam out a little bit. But because Chinese do not have many other
openings, the heat coming out of this opening is sometimes very strong, active
and even violent.
The girl in these pictures is called Guo Meimei (@ Guo Meimei Baby) , a 20-year-old woman who stirred national outrage last year. People were infuriated when she claimed on Sina Weibo to be the general manager of Commerce Chamber of China's Red Cross , boasted about her luxurious lifestyle, showing off her Maserati and Lamborghini cars, expensive handbags and palatial villa. The furious people began to question whether Guo had financed her lifestyle out of money that had been donated to the Society and started a human flesh search to find out the identity of Guo Meimei and her connection with the Red Cross Society. This scandal aroused national questioning, almost a turmoil, against the credibility of Red Cross. On June 20th when she began to flaunt her wealth, only 2126 people were following her. Because of the controversy of her title, over 190,000 people followed her just in three days. By March 27th, the number of her followers had boosted to 700,000.
The girl in these pictures is called Guo Meimei (@ Guo Meimei Baby) , a 20-year-old woman who stirred national outrage last year. People were infuriated when she claimed on Sina Weibo to be the general manager of Commerce Chamber of China's Red Cross , boasted about her luxurious lifestyle, showing off her Maserati and Lamborghini cars, expensive handbags and palatial villa. The furious people began to question whether Guo had financed her lifestyle out of money that had been donated to the Society and started a human flesh search to find out the identity of Guo Meimei and her connection with the Red Cross Society. This scandal aroused national questioning, almost a turmoil, against the credibility of Red Cross. On June 20th when she began to flaunt her wealth, only 2126 people were following her. Because of the controversy of her title, over 190,000 people followed her just in three days. By March 27th, the number of her followers had boosted to 700,000.
Showing-Off Pictures on Weibo |
Although both Guo and the Society publicly denied having any ties to one another afterwards and Guo posted one apologetic weibo five days in a row, continuous disclosures of inside stories and disputes over this incident flooded the Internet. The Red Cross Society of China was plunged into an unprecedented crisis of trust. After police investigation, Guo Meimei actually has no connections with Red Cross. The reason of her doing that is because she felt proud to be associated with charity. But the public does not buy it even after the Red Cross held numerous press conferences and set up a specific Weibo account (@ 中国红十字会)to explain this event. Due to the Red Cross's long established shady operation and lack of internal transparency, as well as its already plummeted public credibility following previous scandals, the collective outburst of public doubt triggered by this incident hardly came as a surprise. It directly shows a general mistrust of government or government-backed institutions in China nowadays.
Apologetic Weibos |
In retrospect,
there are two main reasons that triggered this turmoil. On one hand, China is
in the phase of transformation when misallocation of resources, the unevendistribution of benefits and large gap of wealth and poor are taking place.
People in lower stratum of society who have not received the benefits feel
relative deprivation. They instinctively believe the words such as “official”
and “wealthy” who are China’s benefactors are offensive. This antipathy causes
a “hatred of government” and “hatred of the rich” and becomes a social
phenomenon. Nowadays, many people in China have a stenotype for second
generations of “the official” and “the rich”, assuming they are inevitable bad.
Any ordinary little thing could easily touch sensitive nerves of people with
similar experience and would soon be able to trigger a chain reaction. This
instinctive hatred because of the benefits missing allows Internet users a high
degree of concern for such “showing off” things, and extremely easy to form a
resonance. When Guo Meimei began to show off her wealth on the Internet, she
stepped on people’s such sensitive nerves and caused this scandal.
On the other hand, this event shows a general
mistrust of government or government-backed institutions in China which are not
transparent in so many ways. Red Cross Society of China, as a non-profit
state-backed member of International Federation of Red Cross, has been
synonymous with the public good. As long as there is a sudden natural disaster
or man-made damage, we can always see the presence of the Red Cross flag which
represents the public interest. But because the information of China’s Red
Cross is not as transparent as it is supposed to be, the public had already
lost the trust. If Guo Meimei just showed off her wealth, it may not cause such
a strong reaction. It is the made-up identity of her Sina Weibo account showing
“China’s commercial general manager of he Red Cross” that made the public
suspect the credibility of the China’s Red Cross.
Social media users in China, rather than merely chat personal life and follow other comments, increasingly tend to participate in the discussion of social issues related to politics and use Sina Weibo as a channel to express requirements, supervise government and facilitate social changes ultimately. Guo Meimei scandal is associated with the Red Cross and the trust of government-backed organizations. People participating in this debate hope to achieve the goal of improving charity management in China and supervising government by social media. The progress of a country manifests itself by the progress of its people. It not only involves the improvement of people’s economic life, for which it should give a lot of credits to China, it also includes the enhancement of people’s awareness of democracy, people’s participating in social affairs increasingly and overseeing the governance. The increase democratic consciousness makes a lot of China’s Internet users go through social media expressing their views and monitoring the hot events to promote social justice. It can be clearly seen that the traditional media agenda has been changed from the Guo Meimei scandal. All parties in this event expressed their opinions through Sina Weibo. Sina Weibo users have become another force to promote social justice by initially starting the heated debate on social media and then drawing the attention of traditional mass media. A considerable microblogging politics in China has been formed.
This whole scandal was originated from Sina Weibo, and then distributed rapidly by social media which has enormously impact traditional media agenda. As Sina Weibo users, they are able to discuss social affairs and participate in politics and monitor the development of this whole event from the sense of social supervision. This influential online force has increased the transparency of the Red Cross Society and improved its management.
The role of social
media regarding supervising government management will continue to play in China. It is
anticipated to impact China development in other areas as well in the
future. A high degree of social media’s participation and effective online
discussion have become a substantial form to promote China’s
development in many ways.
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