Xi Jinping's rise to power in late 2012 brought immediate political realignments in China, but the extent of these shifts has remained unclear. In this paper, we evaluate whether the perceived ...changes associated with Xi Jinping's ascent – increased personalization of power, centralization of authority, Party dominance and anti-Western sentiment – were reflected in the content of provincial-level official media. As past research makes clear, media in China have strong signalling functions, and media coverage patterns can reveal which actors are up and down in politics. Applying innovations in automated text analysis to nearly two million newspaper articles published between 2011 and 2014, we identify and tabulate the individuals and organizations appearing in official media coverage in order to help characterize political shifts in the early years of Xi Jinping's leadership. We find substantively mixed and regionally varied trends in the media coverage of political actors, qualifying the prevailing picture of China's “new normal.” Provincial media coverage reflects increases in the personalization and centralization of political authority, but we find a drop in the media profile of Party organizations and see uneven declines in the media profile of foreign actors. More generally, we highlight marked variation across provinces in coverage trends. 2012 年习近平上台以来，中国政治呈现出不少变化，但学者很难清晰地描绘出这些变化的范围和深度。在本文中，我们评估习近平上台后几个可察觉到的趋势（政治权力个人化，中央权威的集中，共产党权力的巩固，以及反西方情绪的增长）是否在省级官方媒体上有所反映。根据以往的研究，中国媒体可以帮助政治精英发送信号，媒体的报道经常揭示不同政治人物的沉浮。通过使用新颖的自动化文本分析方法对数百万报刊文章进行分析，我们统计了个人与团体在所有官方媒体上出现的频率。我们希望借此能清晰地描绘出习近平执政初期所带来的政治变化。我们的分析表明，省级官媒对政治人物的报道方式相当混杂，并具有区域性差异．这意味着各地官方媒体中的 “新常态” 是不一致的。2012 年以来，省级官方媒体对中国最高领导与中央政府机构的报道频率增加，同时，官方媒体对外国政治人物的报道有不同程度的减少。但是，党的组织机构在官方媒体的出现频率有所下降，而媒体报道内容在不同省之间存在不少差异。
Nowhere is the effort to control the flow of digital information more extensive and sustained than it is in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses a wide range of tools and strategies to ...achieve two related, but distinct, goals of digital information control: to shape public knowledge and to "guide" the public in the aftermath of sudden, unexpected events. Controlling social media is especially relevant to the second goal, and the CCP uses strategies of content removal (censorship) and content generation (propaganda) to pursue this aim. Recent studies of the Chinese internet and social media show that the CCP has adapted quickly to new digital communication technologies, though it is in sometimes unexpected ways, and CCP control of Chinese social media is integral to its efforts to shape public beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
An increasing number of scholars have established that authoritarian regimes employ quasi-democratic institutions as part of their efforts to retain power. However, we know little about the potential ...variation among institutions providing citizens with opportunities for voice and the conditions under which such institutions are true channels of responsiveness. In this article, we develop and test the concept of “receptivity,” that is, whether autocrats are willing to incorporate citizen preferences into policy, using a list experiment of 1,377 provincial-and city-level leaders in China. Contrary to expectation, we find that leaders are similarly receptive to citizen suggestions obtained through either formal institutions or the Internet unless they perceive antagonism between the state and citizens, in which case receptivity to input from the Internet declines, while receptivity to formal institutions remains unchanged. Our findings show that whether quasi-democratic institutions are mere window dressing or true channels of responsiveness depends on the perceived quality of state–society relations.
In this case–control study with 387 White esophageal patients and 462 White controls matched to cases by age and sex, we evaluated the associations between 13 potential functional polymorphisms in ...eight major nucleotide excision repair (NER) genes and esophageal cancer risk. In individual single nucleotide polymorphism analysis, after adjustment for multiple comparisons, the heterozygous GT genotype of the ERCC1 3′ untranslated region (UTR) was associated with an increased risk, whereas the homozygous variant genotype TT was associated with 60% reduction in risk with an odds ratio (OR) of 0.40 (95% confidence interval CI = 0.19–0.86). The heterozygous AG genotype of XPA 5′ UTR was at 2.11-fold increased risk (95% CI = 1.33–3.35) and the risk reached 3.10-fold (95% CI = 1.94–4.95) for the homozygous variant GG genotype. These associations were also significant when restricted the analyses in patients with esophageal adenocarcinoma. Further, the CT genotype of the RAD23B Ala249Val was associated with increased esophageal cancer risk (OR = 1.44; 95% CI = 1.05–1.97), whereas the poly-AT−/+ genotype of the XPC intron 9 conferred a decreased risk (OR = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.51–0.97). In joint analysis, individuals carrying 1 (OR = 2.64, 95% CI = 1.57–4.52) and ≥2 (OR = 2.74, 95% CI = 1.58–4.75) unfavorable genotypes exhibited significantly increased risk for esophageal cancer risk with significant dose-response trend (P for trend = 0.006). The pathway-based risk was more evident in ever smokers, overweight/obese individuals, men and ever drinkers. Our results support the hypothesis that increasing numbers of unfavorable genotypes in the NER predispose susceptible individuals to increased risk of esophageal cancer. These findings warrant further replications in different populations.
The translocation of extracellular calcium (Ca(2+)) via voltage-gated Ca(2+) channels (VGCCs) in neurons is involved in triggering multiple physiological cell functions but also the abnormal, ...pathophysiological responses that develop as a consequence of injury. In conditions of neuropathic pain, VGCCs are involved in supplying the signal Ca(2+) important for the sustained neuronal firing and neurotransmitter release characteristic of these syndromes. Preclinical data have identified N-type VGCCs (Ca(v)2.2) as key participants in contributing to these Ca(2+) signaling events and clinical data with the peptide blocker Prialt have now validated Ca(v)2.2 as a bona fide target for future drug discovery efforts to identify new and novel therapeutics for neuropathic pain. Imperative for the success of such an endeavor will be the ability to identify compounds selective for Ca(v)2.2, versus other VGCCs, but also compounds which demonstrate effective blockade during the pathophysiological states of neuropathic pain without compromising channel activity associated with sustaining normal housekeeping cellular functions. An approach to obtain this research target profile is to identify compounds, which are more potent in blocking Ca(v)2.2 during higher frequencies of firing as compared to the slower more physiologically-relevant frequencies. This may be achieved by identifying compounds with enhanced potency for the inactivated state of Ca(v)2.2. This commentary explores the rationale and options for engineering a use-dependent blocker of Ca(v)2.2. It is anticipated that this use-dependent profile of channel blockade will result in new chemical entities with an improved therapeutic ratio for neuropathic pain.
There is a lack of convenient, sensitive, noninvasive strategies for screening and surveillance for colorectal neoplasia. An assay combining the results of circulating epithelial cells (CECs) and ...somatic mutations of cell-free DNA adjusting for age/sex using a unique algorithm is evaluated in patients requiring colonoscopy.
A prospective single-site 458-subject study (asymptomatic: 43% screening/43% surveillance, enriched with 65 symptomatic subjects undergoing colonoscopy) was conducted. The test analyzed CECs and somatic mutations. The probability of advanced neoplasia (advanced adenoma AA and CRCs) was determined by logistic regression methods adjusted for expected CRC incidence rate, prior history of AA, and patient age and sex on a training subset. A linear predictor was developed to generate a score scaled from 0 to 100. The test performance was evaluated on an independent set of subjects using prespecified algorithms and cut point.
Based on a predefined clinical threshold and predictive model derived from the training set (n = 232), analysis of an independent asymptomatic validation set (n = 194) yielded 89% (lower exact one-sided 95% confidence interval CI: 80%) specificity and 100% (95% CI: 37%)/78% (95% CI: 61%) sensitivity for detection of CRC/AA. In a secondary analysis, excluding surveillance subjects, the 97-subject screening cohort yielded 91% (95% CI: 79%) specificity and CRC/AA sensitivity at 100% (95% CI: 37%)/83% (95% CI: 56%, 87% for advanced neoplasia 95% CI: 64%). Significant associations (P < .0001) were detected between FirstSight scores and adenoma size, number, and ordinally increasing pathology classification.
A multimodal blood test that included CECs and somatic mutations with adjustment for age and sex demonstrated high sensitivity for the diagnosis of advanced colorectal neoplasia. The resulting score captures prognostic information for CRC progression of index adenoma size and number and has the potential to enable stratification of patients for screening or postpolypectomy surveillance colonoscopy.
Saudi Arabia has imprisoned and tortured activists, religious leaders, and journalists for voicing dissent online. This reflects a growing worldwide trend in the use of physical repression to censor ...online speech. In this paper, we systematically examine the consequences of imprisoning well-known Saudis for online dissent by analyzing over 300 million tweets as well as detailed Google search data from 2010 to 2017 using automated text analysis and crowd-sourced human evaluation of content. We find that repression deterred imprisoned Saudis from continuing to dissent online. However, it did not suppress dissent overall. Twitter followers of the imprisoned Saudis engaged in more online dissent, including criticizing the ruling family and calling for regime change. Repression drew public attention to arrested Saudis and their causes, and other prominent figures in Saudi Arabia were not deterred by the repression of their peers and continued to dissent online.
Reverse-engineering censorship in China King, Gary; Pan, Jennifer; Roberts, Margaret E.
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
08/2014, Letnik:
345, Številka:
6199
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Censorship of social media in China
Figuring out how many and which social media comments are censored by governments is difficult because those comments, by definition, cannot be read. King
et al.
...have posted comments to social media sites in China and then waited to see which of these never appeared, which appeared and were then removed, and which appeared and survived. About 40% of their submissions were reviewed by an army of censors, and more than half of these never appeared. By varying the content of posts across topics, they conclude that any mention of collective action is selectively suppressed.
Science
, this issue
10.1126/science.1251722
China censors online posts that advocate collective action.
Existing research on the extensive Chinese censorship organization uses observational methods with well-known limitations. We conducted the first large-scale experimental study of censorship by creating accounts on numerous social media sites, randomly submitting different texts, and observing from a worldwide network of computers which texts were censored and which were not. We also supplemented interviews with confidential sources by creating our own social media site, contracting with Chinese firms to install the same censoring technologies as existing sites, and—with their software, documentation, and even customer support—reverse-engineering how it all works. Our results offer rigorous support for the recent hypothesis that criticisms of the state, its leaders, and their policies are published, whereas posts about real-world events with collective action potential are censored.
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