Interesting essay from Far Eastern Economic Review that Munzenberg sent along. China's propaganda and censorship efforts are shifting to civilian "cyber guerrilla's" as the Internet has become difficult for the state to contain. Along with it's methods of firewalling and shutting down sites that offend the party line, the "Fifty Cent Party" (no relation to the American rapper) are a civilian network that troll forums, blogs and other venues of political discussion and leave commentary in favor of the government or against whatever criticisms levied against it. In return for their online patriotism they are paid 50 mao for each comment or post they make. Hence the name.
A snippet from the article:
The CCP’s growing concern about the Internet is based partly on the recognition of the Web’s real power. Even with the limitations imposed by traditional and technical systems of censorship—the best example of the latter being the so-called “Great Firewall”—the Internet has given ordinary Chinese a powerful interactive tool that can be used to share viewpoints and information, and even to organize.
How soon until a reactive cyber guerrilla group manifests itself and begins taking on the Fifty Cent Party?
1 comments:
I pay attention to Computer Network Operations, as much of it as I can understand. I don’t know of any way unorganized civilian volunteers can do anything worthwhile along the lines of Electronic Warfare, Military Deception and Operations Security, but the PSYOP and CNO portions of Information Operations most definitely have untapped amateur talent in the civilian population just waiting for somebody on the inside of our favorite Westphalian nation-state’s military/intelligence apparat to ask for help.
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