My highlights:
The 2022 protests were more elusive. Highly networked, not just a crowd but a swarm.
Discontent against draconian covid policies and long-standing suppression of personal freedoms served as a unifying premise. The genesis can be traced back to a tragic fire in an apartment building in Urumqi. The swarm was fueled not by individual actions but by the viral circulation of this content. It resonated deeply because it evoked memories of similar tragedies earlier in the year. Coalesced into a single, potent, grievance that acted as a promise, drawing people into the swarm.
As people shared images, footage and memes, they themselves became broadcasters, contributing to the networked nature of the swarm.
Faced with the threat of government censorship and the risk of identity exposure, people opted to send their content–primarily visual elements easily shareable–to Li for publication. This streamlined the broadcasting process. Like everyone in the protests, Li is a regular person who rose to the occasion.
He attributed the trust people placed in him to his commitment to reporting in a neutral, objective, truthful way, only report on what happens and not say a word more, not add any personal flavor.
This absence of a formal leader is makes a swarm minimally protocolized. It lacks a defined procedure for collaboration, a hierarchy, leaders, and a planning process for decision-making. A swarm follows nothing else other than the content-oriented around the promise.
In Tokyo, it was divided explicitly into two groups: the “passionate” and the “gentle”, which coexisted peacefully as they shared a single promise with the protesters inside China, despite having different means of achieving it.
The swarm was not a formation with defined boundaries. The lack of formal structure lowered the barrier for entry and exit. This minimizes the cost and responsibility of joining, allowing even passive spectators to contribute by changing their profile photos to white as a symbol against the government censorship.
Attunement is the innate human tendency to mimic the behavior of others. In a swarm, this mimetic behavior serves to strengthen the collective orientation. It eliminated fear. The act of changing one’s profile photo set off a chain reaction, encouraging others to do the same. Radical posts that would typically be censored led to a cascade of similar posts. Video footage of local protests, disseminated through Li’s twitter account, inspired others to report on protests in their own localities. On the streets, the sheer number of protesters served as a safety net. The courage of one individual voicing a radical slogan was often amplified by a chorus of others, emboldening the crowd. Protests in one city triggered protests in dozen of others the following day.
Recognizing the swarm’s success in leveraging its unique characteristics, the government deployed tactics specifically designed to neutralize these traits.
Discourage entry by attaching accountability and responsibilities to participation. Identify and track down the instigators of the protests .Linking digital identities to real-life personas, aiming to debilitate the swarm’s ability to maintain anonymity. The city’s Ministry of Public Security initiated a data surveillance project, which combined human analysts and automated tools to screen news and social media accounts around the clock for discussions that could escalate into dissent. Systematically punish protesters individually.
Because there are no clear boundaries for what constitutes participation in the swarm, the government resorted to ongoing expansion of its surveillance. Regulations now require all online sites to verify user’s real identities before they can comment or even like posts.
Dismantle networking capabilities. Government censors swiftly deleted videos and photographs of the protests that circulated on Chinese social media platforms. Remove information about VPNs that could be used to bypass censorship. Rather than censoring criticism of the state, the focus was on silencing content that could spur social mobilization. Protesters resorted to alternative platforms, including dating apps and social media platforms blocked in mainland China, to evade censors. They also minimized the explicitness of their messages. Tight-knit networks of friends traded information using a decentralized model, ironically enabled by China’s strict covid prevention measures which had fostered interconnectedness among neighbors, workers and students. Censorship might have inadvertently aided the swarm by keeping its content ephemeral.
Disorient the swarm’s focus and unity. Flooding social media with spam, including lewd photos and videos, to dilute politically sensitive posts and make them difficult to find. Introduce a false narrative or fake promise into the swarm. Nationalist commentators claimed that the dissenters were organized by clandestine foreign agents, aiming to sow doubt and confusion within the swarm itself. Defame the swarm to prevent future occurrences. The protests could have acted as a political offramp for the government, lessening blame if the country suffers a wave of covid-related deaths. By framing the swarm as a potential liability rather than a legitimate form of dissent, the government aims to discourage similar collective actions in the future.