Fork of Normalization of Censorship: Evidence from China

Censorship in China is massive in scale and still growing. Previous studies of censorship in China focus primarily on government criticism and collective actions and find that political censorship will lead to backlash from the citizens. However, novel observational evidence shows that a majority of censored articles are unrelated to either government criticism or collective actions. This study investigates the implication of such expansion in range and scale of censorship. It hypothesizes that when censorship is expanded beyond government criticism and collective action, backlash from the citizens will be reduced.