An Exploration of Linguistic Resistance to Chinese Censorship Online

The Chinese government exerts a tremendous amount of control over the returned results for web searches on sites like Sina Weibo, a large micro-blogging site. Internet users create increasingly intricate and creative methods... [ view full abstract ]

The Chinese government exerts a tremendous amount of control over the returned results for web searches on sites like Sina Weibo, a large micro-blogging site. Internet users create increasingly intricate and creative methods of avoiding censorship as previous methods become unavailable. Although the most current methods of resistance are not easily available for study, examining the search terms that have been blocked sheds light on how censorship and linguistic creativity influence one another. I am working with a crowd-sourced data set of blocked terms to analyze the linguistic strategies used, focusing on personal names, homophones and pictographic representations.