Boss Hua and the Black Box

Undiscovered

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Wnyc, Society & Culture, 805813, Science, History, Friday, Studios

4.6 • 768 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2017

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A team of social scientists stumbles onto a cache of censored Chinese social media posts—and decides to find out what the Chinese government wants wiped from the internet. On China’s most influential microblogging platform, a wristwatch aficionado named Boss Hua accuses a government official of corruption. But, his posts aren’t censored. So what disappears into the black box of Chinese censorship...and what stays online? A team of social scientists cracked this question—by mistake—with big data. (Original art by Claire Merchlinsky) FOOTNOTES See the picture that got ‘Smiling Official’ Yang Dacai fired. Read Gary, Jen, and Margaret’s first study on Chinese government censorship (American Political Science Review). Read the results of Gary, Jen, and Margaret’s social media experiment (Science). Read Gary, Jen, and Margaret’s latest study, about what the Chinese government secretly posts to the internet. Hear Gary King on Science Friday. CREDITS This episode of Undiscovered was reported and produced by Annie Minoff and Elah Feder. Editing by Christopher Intagliata. Fact-checking help from Michelle Harris. Original music by Daniel Peterschmidt. Our theme music is by I am Robot and Proud. Art for this episode by Claire Merchlinsky. Story consulting by Ari Daniel. Translations and voicing by Isabelle. Thanks to Science Friday’s Danielle Dana, Christian Skotte, Brandon Echter, and Rachel Bouton.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listener supported, WNYC Studios.
0:09.2	I'm Ella, and I'm Annie, and you're listening to Undiscovered, a podcast about the backstories of science.
0:18.1	This story starts with a crash.
0:20.6	This really horrific traffic collision with a crash.
0:28.3	This really horrific traffic collision on a highway in Shanxi province, which is in northwestern China.
0:35.9	That's Josh Chin. He's a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, and the crash he's talking about happened in August of 2012.
0:43.3	A double-decker sleeper bus slammed into a tanker carrying a flammable material, I think it was methane.
0:51.3	36 people died. In the state news photo, you can see the blackened husk of the bus sitting on the side of the road. There are some cops in reflective vests. And then at the very
0:55.5	back of the picture, you notice this guy. The sort of portly official looking guy, sort of
1:02.3	standing next to the charred wreckage, sort of smiling, very unperturbed by the scene.
1:10.5	Users on Sino Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, they noticed the smiling man in the picture.
1:15.9	And they were livid.
1:17.3	So here are some sample posts from social media, courtesy of our translator, Isabel.
1:21.6	And you can hear, people are just venting their frustration at this man.
1:26.1	Okay, so this one says, with a massive belly from overeating,
1:30.3	smiling and laughing at the scene of death, simply inhuman.
1:34.3	And since he loves smiling so much, I hope these unfortunate dead souls can just take him away with them.
1:40.3	Let him smile to his content down there in hell.
1:43.3	So, Waybo users, they tried to figure out
1:45.8	who this guy was. And they went on the internet, did a bunch of image searches, basically trying
1:51.1	to turn up more pictures of him. And they hit paydirt. The smiler was Jan Dot Sai, Communist Party
1:59.4	official and head of the Shanxi province work safety administration.
	...

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