Transcript: Chinese Digital Vigilantism

Transcript: Chinese Digital Vigilantism

The mediated and mediatised justice-seeking

A conversation with Qian Huang

 00:00:02

Joanne Kuai

Welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Joanne Kuai. I am a Ph.D. candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden and a visiting student at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Joining me today to talk about China's digital vigilantism is Qian Huang. Qian Huang is a lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She's finalizing her Ph.D. dissertation on the topic of China's digital vigilantism. She's also the co-editor of the book Introducing Vigilant Audiences, published by the Open Book Publishers in 2020. Qian, thank you so much for being here today.

00:00:47

Qian Huang

Thank you, Joanne, for inviting me. Hello, everyone. It's my honor to speak to you about my research here.

00:00:54

Joanne Kuai

So I met Qian through a study group called the Informal, of which she is a co-founder of. The group has been giving me tremendous support as I just started my academic career, especially amid COVID. I really appreciate what Qian has done, but we can talk about it a bit later. Let's get down to the topic of today - China's digital vigilantism. So to begin with, Qian, would you please explain to us what is digital vigilantism?

00:01:19

Qian Huang

Yeah, definitely. So digital vigilance means that people take justice into their own hands in the sense that when they find something offensive to them, either they find it online or they find it in their real life, they will use the visibility online to attack, to revenge, to punish this individual on social media platforms. So there are some vague boundaries in digital vigilantism in the sense that when we think about vigilante actions, sometimes we think about not collaborating with law enforcement, but actually in reality, there are a lot of collaboration going on to different degrees. So it can happen that people will report a specific action to the law enforcement at the same time when they take justice into their own hands. So the boundaries are quite blurred here.

00:02:16

Joanne Kuai

And can you give us some examples of digital vigilantism?

00:02:16

Qian Huang

I will say digital vigilantism is quite a broad term and that it covers many of the phenomenons that we understand in different kind of concepts in a society. So for example, when we discuss cancel culture, that is happening a lot on social media recently. And when we talk about the MeToo movements, when we talk about crowdsourcing information to catch a criminal. So all this kind of behaviors and context can be regarded as digital vigilantism. Basically, any behavior that weaponize the online visibility to revenge, to control a specific social behavior that is deemed offensive, you can call it digital vigilantism action. In China, if we talk about more high-profile cases, the earliest one will be traced back to 2006, when a woman who was seen in a video clip crashing a cat - it's quite graphic. Yeah, it's terrifying. So what happened was that within three days, this woman's address names and her occupation was doxxed out on a forum called mop. com in China. So afterwards, she has to resign from her post. And of course, she disappeared completely in order to have her normal life. So that would be the very first high profile case in China. If the audience are familiar with some Chinese online phenomenons, you will know that this is so called human flesh search 人肉搜索). So a lot of times, when w e talk about Chinese digital vigilantism, people will immediately think about this human flesh search action. So that will be more dated examples. And then if you think about more, the further development that would be from 2007 to 2013, I would say. There are a lot of very high profile cases against Chinese corrupted officials. So one very interesting example would be the watch uncle case.

00:04:48

So this official is a provincial level official and then he was seen in a car accident scene. He was photographed as smiling in the tragic scene, which caused people's suspicion and discontent in the sense that why is this person smiling, why is this official smiling in such a tragic moment? So then people start to dox him and then they realized that on a lot of media reports, he is wearing 11 different  luxurious watches, which indicates that he definitely got some extra income in addition to his normal salary because otherwise you cannot afford that. Because of this, he actually got investigated and then removed from the post because of the corruption. So that it is a very high-profile case. And what's like funny is that after this case, a lot of Chinese officials stop wearing watches. And then there are even photos showing that you can see the tan line on their wrists where obviously they were wearing expensive watches, but now everyone just remove that. So that's another very prominent case, I would say. So if we talk about more recent developments, there are a lot of cases that's more nationalistic where people would dox Chinese overseas students who say something that's not patriotic. So one very specific case, I don't want to say the name of the girl, but there is this Chinese female students in Maryland University. And then she was giving a commencement speech in which she compare the air quality in China and America at the same time, make the analogy of the freedom of speech. So after this video got reposted on Chinese social media, immediately, iinvokes a large scale of doxing about this girl. And of course, all her information was out, and then she basically disappeared on any kind of social media platforms, which can be devastating for a job finding or, you know, like future developments in her career. Yeah, so those are some cases. I mean, I can talk about this the whole day. I have a thousand cases collected.

00:07:20

Joanne Kuai

It seems that this kind of digital vigilantism that happens online also have real-life ramifications. And from some, I would say individual actions it will lead to, like collective actions. Is that correct? For example, for the corrupted official, it was, the netizens noticed a phenomenon, but later on he was punished through the official channels. So how do we make out of this? Does it happen the same way in the West that you also have this kind of ramifications through other channels?

00:07:30

Qian Huang

Yeah, that's a very good observation, definitely. Even when we are talking about it as digital vigilantism, it does not only impact digital life for sure, because especially when we are living in a society that is highly digitalised and a lot of our daily lives are dependent on that. And if you think a bout it, rights like nowadays, if you want to find a job, you need to create an online profile like LinkedIn and or for us is the ResearchGate or other things like that. And of course, Twitter, all those kind of things that will give you an online presence that will help you in your career development. So that is just one kind of perspective. Because of that, if you are forced to quit internet, if you're forced to diminish your online presence because you are doxed, because you become the targets, and then it will also bring a big problem for your real life, for sure. So that's the thing about this boundary between online and offline kind of get blurred, for sure. And then in terms of the differences between China and the West or any other countries, I would say that there are definitely similarities, but the differences would be, in China, it's more organic, I would say. So one of our colleagues, Rashid Gabdulhakov, he is doing research the same research in Russia. So what he found is that they are more organized activities of digital vigilantism in Russia. For example, they have a whole franchise organization targeting bad parking and driving.  And then there is some group that targeting bad food in local supermarkets, so they are more organized. They have a specific organization that is targeting a specific kind of behavior. So it is completely different in China in the sense that we don't really have this kind of organizations and groups.

00:10:24

Qian Huang

Most of the time, it is an ad hoc activity, meaning that it take place quite naturally and you never know when it will happen. As you said, sometimes is just one specific individual post something and it got reposted. And that topic generates a lot of attention or generates a lot of hate or anger, and that will spark a whole other round of larger scale of doxing . So I would say that in China is more organic compared to Russia. And then if compared to the West, I would say that the Chinese  cases have more dynamics with the government. The government is more involved in resolving these cases. For example, as we talk about it, the corrupted officials, normally they will be removed by the government because that plays into the legitimacy of the government. At the same time, if you look at the recent development of digital vigilantism in China, police are very much involved. They will have announcements to kind of define the nature of a specific case. So either it is a breach of privacy or it is online bullying, or it is a brave action to catch a criminal. So you see the police are more or less involved and especially if you think about that on Sina Weibo, we have official police accounts in a province or in cities or even in towns. So what the Chinese netizens are doing is that they will expose certain cases and then they will tag the specific institution and  the police force as well. So that is something quite unique in China. I wouldn't say that the Western citizens are so engaged  with the police force.

Joanne Kuai

It sounds quite interesting because the cases that you've mentioned, from monitoring parking spots to bad food to, you know, take out take down like criminals and even corrupted officials, it sounds like there's a large range of all these kind of cases. How do you categorize just different kind of cases and why is it important to study this kind of digital vigilantism under the same umbrella?

00:12:40

Qian Huang

Yeah, exactly. I think the breadth of this phenomenon is huge. It's just such a big range of it. The reason why we put them all under the same term is that sometimes you will find it very hard to define whether it is a complete criminal case or something that's purely about morality. Right? So when we talk about when we talk about relationship affairs, it feels like it's completely morality issues or it's just someone's personal affairs that we shouldn't interfere with it. But when this affair includes the power dynamics, include sexual harassment, include what Chinese people are now super interested in, the PUA, the pick up artist and type of thing. So it suddenly becomes a little bit criminal. Or at least there are some legality issues involved. And of course, if you're talking about the bad parking, bad driving, sometimes they are also illegal because there are some places that you are not allowed to park and there is speed limit on the road. And of course, you are also breaking the law, right? So it's not only about morality, it's also about the law. So how do you define whether I am fighting a criminal or I am just being nosy to someone else’s personal life. So this is the same thing happened in the Covid time. If you think about it, neighbors report on each other in the sense says, Oh, they are having illegal parties when there is a lockdown. There's a word called covidiots. So they are the idiots that's who are doing the wrong thing in the COVID time. How do you define it as illegal? Is it something that you should report to the government or not? Or it is completely morality issues? It is exactly because of this very blurred boundary between legal issue, criminal issue, morality issue.

00:15:25

Qian Huang

And there may be some even just like identity issue. I will say, like a lot of times, it's about being unpatriotic or not, or whether you are a good fan or bad fan. So a lot of things can happen just because of this blurred boundaries. We want to have this term that can help people to understand the essence of it. Instead of thinking, Oh, this kind of conduct, it is helping the police to catch a criminal or this is a conduct that is being nosy neighbor. So we want to understand what is the drive behind this. All this kind of different variation of vigilantism basically is people's sense of justice, no matter this justice comes from your value system or comes from a social norm or comes from a specific regulations or laws, right? So it is generated from this sense of justice and the sense that we need to take care of our society or take care of our community. That is why we want to put all this under this term to study.

Joanne Kuai

Hmm. But from what you just mentioned as well, like I understood, digital vigilantism sometimes can be good as in it can expose corruption cases or point the police or officials attention to some cases that that they might have missed, criminals. But at the same time, it could also lead to undesirable outcomes, when it become like an internet mob and created difficulties for people's living. And in the book that you edited, you also mentioned a case of the elderly in the Netherlands that got almost bullied into committing suicide, that kind of incidents. So how do we make out of this digital vigilantism? Is it like a double edged sword? What's your take on this?

00:16:39

Qian Huang

Yeah, that's a question I got very often a lot of times when people hear that I'm studying this. They will immediately ask, Oh, and then is it good or bad? Right? So of course there are some cases you can obviously see that it is good in the sense that, for example, there are a lot of vigilantes hunting down pedophiles. So they're trying to expose people who are making child pornography or who are sexually assaulting children. So you can't really say that is a double sort there because it is kind of positive. But of course, at the same time, what our colleagues Rashid found is that, for example, in Russia, a lot of vigilantes targeting pedophiles, sometimes they're also homophobic. So they were specifically targeting gays in the sense that they will call any of their actions as pedophiles. So you will see here there is some cases that is obviously good, but and then it can become problematic at some point. And there are cases that are obviously problematic in a sense that it is very proportionate punishment for an individual. For example, what you mentioned in our book, we talk about this Dutch lady stealing a wallet but got doxxed and harassed to commit suicide. So that is obviously a bad thing. But what we are seeing here is a spectrum. You have the obviously good. You have to obviously bad and then you have things in the middle. And it really depends on specific cases and also your value system that become very complicated in the sense that, for example, when we talk about nationalism, when we talk about patriotism, what do you think when people expose patriotic people, right? So for some Chinese people, it is a good thing because that will generate a better Chinese national community. And then when we think about it to MeToo, obviously it is a progressive movements and then it definitely brings a lot more opportunities for the women to speak up against the abuse they're putting under.

00:20:05

At the same time, the the MeToo activists are also sometimes being criticized for not providing enough evidence or giving the defendant a do a due process of this kind of like illegal actions. So that is where we get lost in defining whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, or we try to say, Oh, this is a double edged sword, because even in this one case, it can be so-called good and bad at the same time. So I feel like we should talk about digital vigilantism more as a method and a tool that should be scrutinized. It is just a medium or it is a channel. It is a way of doing things. So that's make a not so correct analogies. So nowadays, when we talk about internet, we don't talk about it as good or bad anymore. Right. So we understand that there is complexity to it. But if we go back to 20 years ago, when the internet is still not so prevalent, sometimes we talk about it as, Oh, the internet is good in a sense that it generates civic movements, all this kind of thing that some people also talk about it as a bad thing, especially for parents. They talk about it as internet addiction. Right? So with the development of the internet, with the people are more used to the internet and our lives become very dependent on it. We stopped to ask this question whether internet is good or bad. We understand the complexity. So for me, the more I study digital vigilantism, the more I kind of approach it in this way in the sense that it is a way of doing things. It is a method of people dealing with their anger dealing with their discontent, and then it is a possibility that offered by the technology and it is hard to say it is good or bad and we should not approach it only in that light.

Joanne Kuai

In this very impressive reviewed how you've conducted of this many cases, (is there) any other notable trends or phenomenon?

00:22:35

Qian Huang

Several trends that are very obvious is that when I was talking about the corrupted official cases that peaked between 2007 and 2013, so after 2013, there is almost none corruption official cases anymore. The reasons might be, first of all, there is an internal campaign against corruption. So there are less cases left for the citizens to find. And the other reason would be that the media literacy among this officials increased. Why do I say it? Because a lot of the cases in 2007 and 2008 are caused by a lack of knowledge of how to use social media from the officials. So some of them don't realize how people can collect information about their lifestyle, about their expenditures just by looking at their online presence, just by looking at the news reports. So another thing is that there are a lot of mistakes made. So one case that's specifically funny is that this official thought the Sina Weibo is a private messaging app. So he was posting publicly flirting with his mistress. But all of this are public, of course, and then people start to realize, Oh, this is a government official, and then he is having a mistress, and then there is a lot of graphic language there. So that is the reason why he got exposed and then he got fired, kicked off the team. So those are the things when they don't have enough media literacy. So I will say that in recent years, people just know how to hide their tracks better. And of course, there might be another reason is that there is a tightening up of the social media control of the of the social media speech or this kind of thing. So, yeah, multiple reasons. So that it is one trend that I find especially interesting because people don't really talk about it.

00:25:04

Qian Huang

But every time when I start to introduce this trend, when I talk to Chinese people about this, they will have this epiphany moment say like, Oh yeah, that's right, we don't hear any cases about corrupted, official exposed on social media anymore. So, yeah, that's something I find interesting.

00:25:25

Joanne Kuai

Where do you see China's digital vigilantism going?

Qian Huang

I think it's going to get worse in the sense that people are very much used to this methods. So now people use this in a routine way. So what we find in recent cases is in the Xiao Zhan case. So the pop idol.

Joanne Kuai

I have had no knowledge of it. What was that about?

00:25:32

Qian Huang

Yeah. So last year in February. So this pop idol, Xiao Zhan got boycotted by another group of fans who call themselves 227 because that incident take place in in February 27th. So that is the name come from. The reason why he got boycotted was that several of his fans or a section of his fans, reported a fan fiction article to the Chinese internet. Kind of like control system, you know, saying that this is pornography and they should be banned. So which results in the blocking of the whole site? Three. So that is the biggest international fan fiction forum or sites. So I know you might get confused

00:27:03

Joanne Kuai

You can see it on my face. I’m very confused.

00:27:06

Qian Huang

So yeah, I don't want to get too much into that because it's just another whole world that we need to talk about. So in in essence, is that citizens, Chinese citizens are very much aware of the power of reports or the power of expose something online, and then they make it a habit to do that to get things going in their way. So I will say that more people will resort to that kind of methods. And then if you look at the global trend, it is also the same thing. So we have this call our culture. We have this cancel culture where people are very used to using social media to expose someone to shame other people so that they feel that they are doing something about injustice. They are doing something about the things that they don't think is going right. I will say globally, people are more used to these methods and they will just get worse. You will just get more routinized. It will just get more of a habit for the people. I'm quite pessimistic about it. And to be honest, I think the only solution would be more education. And in terms of media literacy and also social media ethics in the sense that people need to empathize, empathize with each other a little bit more to understand the proportionate results consequence will be brought by this kind of behavior. So I think the only solution would be more education. Otherwise, it's just going to get more intense and more common as a practice.

00:29:00

Joanne Kuai

Mm-Hmm. There's a no better way to end this, but before I let you go, would you like to promote a little bit of our study group and maybe recruit a few more members?

00:29:11

Qian Huang

Oh, yeah, sure, that's that. Sounds great. Thank you for this. How to say like a product placement opportunity? Yeah. So we we have this little reading group or a study group called the Informal. It is a very informal association of early stage academics who study Chinese media, and we basically read texts or watch some films sometimes. And then we discuss things and we share our own research outcomes. Yeah, it's very informal, and that is why the name is called informal. And if we're interested, we have a website and this informal.org and then you can find a way to contact us on the website.

00:29:57

Joanne Kuai

Yeah, I can say is a really supportive environment, and I really appreciate what you have done. And Chen, thank you very much again for joining us today and to our listeners. You can connect with Qian on Twitter @XeniaQianHuang and with me @JoanneKuai. I thank you for listening to the Nordic Asia podcast, showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia.