Invisible footprints of online commentators

• Source: Global Times
• [03:04 February 05 2010]
• Comments

A picture dated July, 2009 showing a training session for Internet commentators, conducted by the Inspection Commission in Raohe county, Heilongjiang Province.

Pay cut

An official document revealed that in 2004, the CPC Changsha Municipal Committee began to hire a group of Internet commentators who were paid a basic salary of 600 yuan ($88) a month, plus 50 cents ($7 cents) for each post. Many believe that's where the "5 mao" came from.

Lately, the online commentators have taken a pay cut. On the Hengyang Dangjian website, a recent notice advertised that Internet commentators will be given an allowance of 0.1 yuan for one article and no more than 100 yuan ($14) a month, apart from their basic salary.

Beifeng, a former commentator for a news portal, told the Global Times that commentators either work full-time for State-owned news portals, such as xinhuanet.com, people.com.cn and southcn. com or work part-time as government employees for various government branches, including ministries, public security and academic institutions.

"There are an estimated 20 full-time commentators in Guangdong Province. They usually write two to four articles a week and seldom reply to posts," he said.

A commentator surnamed Song, 28, who works for a county-level discipline inspection commission in South China's Hunan Province, said writing news propaganda was part of his job.

"We usually write about our own achievements and comment on the fight against corruption and building a clean government," Song said.

If local news portals run their articles, the writers get 40 yuan per article for 500 words. The price goes up to 200 yuan if they get published on websites run by the central government.

They are occasionally trained by rednet.cn, a forum run by the Publicity Department of CPC Hunan Provincial Committee, teaching recruits how to become a Web correspondents and delve deeper into policy issues.

There are more than 100 correspondents in the county, mostly working in their spare time, Song said. The county has a population of about 1 million.

This group, mostly public servants, goes online as ordinary users. They then try to put the best face possible on government policies, or praise the virtues and achievements of role models like Shen Hao, a local hero from Xiaogang Village, Anhui Province, who died at age 45.

Their supervisors give them detailed instructions on how to complete each article. They use QQ group to communicate with each other.

Several days ahead of China's 2008 National Day celebration, 20 commentators in Hengyang, Hunan Province were given an urgent assignment to write 1,000 posts on the discussion topic, "Emancipating minds and development of Hengyang." Local government leaders had solicited advice from netizens and wanted to counter any negative replies with positive comments.

Each commentator had to edit and post more than 60 suggestions and offer advice, based on propaganda materials they had each received. Comments between 100 and 500 Chinese characters in length were to be posted on rednet.cn. They were encouraged to sign up under many IDs and post no more than five comments for each user name.

There was even a guidebook of Dos and Don'ts on writing articles properly to shape public opinion.

An anonymous editor at tianya.cn, which boasts 30 million registered users, made it clear that no Internet commen-tators had been hired by the website to shape public opinion, but also noted that the online forum has a department to censor content.

"We've found online public relations companies doing commercials inside the forums, trying to reach tens of thousands of users to create a commercial hype," she said. "These online pushers are not easily recognized because we mostly delete illegal and pornographic content."

As for the online commentators blending in with ordinary users, she said, "They can register as many IDs as they want, as long as they don't violate the law."

The editor recalled how the online commentators were quickly mobilized during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and again during the Xinjiang riots.

Pressure

Wang, a former employee at the Public Security Bureau, told the Global Times that she has never heard of the "online commentators," but she acknowledged that there are a certain number of people trying to spin online opinions into support for the government.

Wang said netizens often misunderstand the commentators, and that "actually they are not that mysterious. Guiding public opinion is just a job."

"It is necessary to have the commentators because sometimes truth may hurt social stability," Wang said. "Netizens want to seek justice, but from their perspective, they can't foresee possible negative consequences."

"The forums can't be easily controlled, but it seems to work that way because most netizens tend to follow what others say," Wang added.

A law graduate student, who preferred to remain anonymous, said netizens may have their own opinions but the "online commentators" can have a beneficial value.

"Endless online comments put much pressure on the judicial authorities," he said. "In fact, some of their criticisms are not appropriate. Perhaps that's when the online commentators are doing the right thing."

Beifeng played down the impact of the "online commentators":

"They are inefficient and ineffective," he said, "People who can log on to Twitter can't be easily swayed."