Collection of scripts to scrape Weibo and Weiboscope for posts that were recently censored.
Russia is engaging in a global disinformation campaign as China expands its online censorship to an unprecedented degree. Although qualitatively opposite—Russia seeks to spread disinformation internationally while China seeks to suppress information domestically—both employ the Internet to engage in “information warfare.” In this repository, part of a broader Independent Project (IP) at Phillips Academy, we will combine historical inquiry and applied computer science to study digital propaganda and censorship from both a political and technical perspective.
This project is split into two distinct parts. The first unit will explore Chinese state censorship online, and seeks to answer what are the interests the Chinese Communist Party seeks to protect domestically with its internet monitoring. The second unit explores Russian state disinformation campaigns online, primarily through the use of its “Internet Research Agency” (IRA) to mold the public opinion of foreign populations (for example, Ukraine during the annexation of Crimea and the United States during the 2016 election).
- Miles McCain '19
- Jeffrey Shen '19
This project was created under the direct mentorship of John Palfrey, Michael Barker, and Gosia Stergios. We received additional help from Dr. Rob Faris at the Berkman-Klein Center and Ethan Zuckerman at the MIT Media Lab.
This project is licensed under GPL-3.0 - see the LICENSE file for details