How China Uses Social Media in Grey Zone Operations toward Taiwan
Abstract:
The term ‘grey zone’ indicates a state actor’s actions up to the point of armed conflict and is increasingly associated with China’s foreign policy. China has harnessed Western social media to defend its national interests, drawing international attention to its discourse of war and its often-hostile rhetoric. This paper analyses Chinese state-sponsored tweets about Taiwan, a focal point for Chinese grey zone activity. Empirical topic modelling techniques to aggregate narratives in large-scale social media data were leveraged to interpret them from a doctrinal understanding of Chinese influence operations. Additionally, the authors used statistical methods to examine the relationship between China’s information and military operations toward Taiwan. This paper finds that China uses its state-sponsored accounts to coordinate and amplify social media messaging around military campaigns with strategic importance. Additionally, the presence of a multipronged approach using social media to support military campaigns may indicate an escalation in conflict.
AUTHORS
Software and Societal Systems Department
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Charity S. Jacobs (M.S., University of Chicago) is a Ph.D. student of Societal Computing at Carnegie Mellon University and a Data Scientist at the Department of Defense. Her research interests include understanding how state actors exploit the information environment using graph theory and applied machine learning.
Software and Societal Systems Department
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Joshua Uyheng (M.S., Carnegie Mellon University) is a Ph.D. candidate of Societal Computing at Carnegie Mellon University. His research examines the narrative and network dynamics of online hate through the lens of computational social science.
Software and Societal Systems Department
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Kathleen M. Carley Ph.D., (Harvard University) is a professor of Societal Computing in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, an IEEE Fellow, the director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS), and the CEO.
Published In
Journal of Information Warfare
The definitive publication for the best and latest research and analysis on information warfare, information operations, and cyber crime. Available in traditional hard copy or online.
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