![]() Stromberg and his colleagues analyzed over 13.2 billion blog posts published on Weibo over the course of four years. ![]() This manifests itself most clearly on the micro-blogging platform Weibo, often dubbed the Chinese Twitter. But it also means that the leaders in those authoritarian countries have a better instrument for surveillance," says David Strömberg, professor at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University. "When people think about social media in non-democratic countries, they think that people can use social media to get information or organize protests. WeChat's "City Services" tab offers functions like paying utility bills, scheduling doctor's appointments and checking driving penalty points. Oppressive regimes have always had an eye on what its citizens can say and do, but the sheer amount of information that social media and its features collect make this government control so much easier. Social media as " better instrument of control" The app and its competitors are amassing never-seen amounts of data about its users in China – data that the Chinese government can monitor. WeChat has over one billion registered accounts with 850 million active users. It sounds convenient, doesn't it? But what happens when every single step of your day is documented in that app? This scenario is already everyday reality in China: We are talking about WeChat, a messaging app turned into a so-called "super-app," developed by the Chinese Tech company Tencent. ![]() And of course you post your lunch pictures for all of your friends to see, too. You schedule a doctor's appointment and see your check-up results afterwards. You make lunch reservations and transfer your co-worker money for said lunch. Imagine this: You pay your morning coffee with your phone, and then check into work with a tap of your fingers.
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