China Journal : Chinese Bloggers Really Are Edgy

China Journal : Chinese Bloggers Really Are Edgy: “Western journalists often write about the ability of Chinese bloggers to challenge authority and provide an alternative voice to the propaganda that often fills China’s official news media. How accurate is that description across China’s vast blogosphere?

“Ashley Esarey, an assistant professor at Middlebury College, set out to describe the political discussion on Chinese blogs in a quantitative way. At the Chinese Internet Research Conference on Saturday, he shared the results of content analysis he conducted on more than 500 blogs with political content and discussion of news events from 2006. He compared the results of that study to a similar content analysis of major Chinese newspapers.”