Chinese authorities directed paid trolls to manipulate the online discourse on COVID-19 related news, according to a report by the New York Times and ProPublica.
Chinese officials worked extensively to suppress “inconvenient news” regarding COVID-19. They had even disabled the push notification features over the news to the death of Li Wenliang, the doctor who had warned about the outbreak and later died of COVID-19.
The same officials later instructed Chinese social media platforms to heavily regulated the trending topics, remove the doctor's name from trending list, and activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter.
A special directive to news websites and social media platforms said: “... do not use push notifications, do not post comments, do not stir up the speculation. Safely control the fervour in online discussions, do not create hashtags, gradually remove from trending topics, strictly control harmful information.”
China is manipulating online discourse to enforce Chinese Communis Party’s (CCP) propaganda while Western democracies are being divided by social media platforms, the report mentioned.
These documents indicate that Chinese officials have tried to steer the COVID-19 related narrative to make sure the virus looks less severe while making the authorities look more equipped to deal with it. Subsequently, China has been slammed by the US and other countries for trying to hide the extent of the outbreak.
Several news outlets in China were also instructed not to play up reports on donations and purchases of medical supplies from abroad, as they can disrupt China’s procurement efforts.
“Avoid giving the false impression that our fight against the epidemic relies on foreign donations,” one directive said.
China has been criticised widely across the world for its alleged role in the spread of the novel coronavirus that has infected over 75 million people across the world. More than 1.6 million people have lost their lives to the virus.
