Social Media, Mobile Communication, and the Elections: Examining Independent
9.2 Local People’s Congress Elections and Independent Candidates
The notion that China as an authoritarian country has no elections is not correct; it holds direct elections at the lowest levels of the people’s congress, China’ law- making body. Article 97 of the Chinese Constitution stipulates that “… deputies to
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the people’s congresses of counties, cities not divided into districts, municipal dis- tricts, townships, nationality townships and towns are elected directly by their con- stituencies” (Chinese Constitution 1982 , p.29–30).
Competing for seats in the lowest bodies in the tiered parliamentary system is largely made possible by the 1953 election law which allows initial candidates to be nominated by voters jointly, requires direct election of delegates to the county peo- ple’s congresses, and enforces the use of secret ballots (Nathan 1985 ; Womack 1982 ). The law opens up an institutional space for grassroots participation in Chinese politics (Huang and Chen 2011 ). Following the passing of the new election law, “independent candidates” emerged in local congressional elections, posing potential challenges to the authoritative rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
Independent candidates in Chinese Local People’s Congress elections are not like those in elections of liberal democracies - candidates unaffi liated with existing political parties. Independent candidates in the Chinese LPC election context refer to those who run for deputy seats but are not handpicked or endorsed by the ruling Party (also known as citizen candidates, autonomous campaigners, self-initiated candidates, etc.). The features of independent candidates include being autonomous (He 2008 ), self-initiated (Lei 2013 ), and publicized (Pu 2012 ). Shen ( 2015 ) defi ned independent candidates as “voter-nominated LPC candidates who are self- motivated, running an active and publicized campaign, and relying on their own resources for garnering support” (p.117).
Not surprisingly, LPC elections are under the tight control of the ruling Party (Yuan 2011 ). The authorities make good use of numerous legal and extralegal means to set hurdles at different stages of elections to prevent ‘undesirable’ candidates from entering the race or winning votes. For instance, candidates can be refused to be registered as a voter , which is a prerequisite for joining the election race, or can- didates might be threatened to drop out of the race, in extreme cases. After all, the election law bans large-scale electoral competition and tightly restricts the duration and methods of campaigning (Shi and Lei 1999 ).
During the 2011–2012 LPC election cycle, a total of two million deputies to the lowest level of people’s congresses were reelected. Independent candidacy is not a brand new phenomenon. But the natural ebb and fl ow of candidates was reconfi g- ured by the coming of new communication technologies. Social media, Sina Weibo in particular, facilitated the growth of participants in the most recent elections. With new communication technologies, independent candidates can easily announce their candidacy online, offer viewpoints on different social issues , and mobilize the electorate beyond their personal social networks.
Social Media Campaigning: Decentralized Communication at Low Cost
The advent of the social media platform brings a new wave of technological opti- mism, the notion that social media carries the gene of a participatory political cul- ture (Loader and Mercea 2011 ). Many believe that social media can enrich grassroots
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democracy and weaken authoritarian state controls because of its decentralized net- work for communication. In particular, for campaigners, social media offer a more controlled media environment which facilitates candidates’ communication with voters directly (Williams et al. 2005 ) and peer-to-peer mobilization (Liu 2013 ). One of the earliest successful examples was U.S. Democratic contender Howard Dean who garnered grassroots support based on the use of blogs in the 2004 primary elec- tions (Trippi 2004 ). In European elections, social media helped individual candi- dates to be more independent of the party during campaign periods (Karlsen 2011 ).
In addition to personal control over the information fl ow, a social media based campaign offers the opportunity for candidates to carry out a dialogic communica- tion with the electorate (Sweetser and Lariscy 2008 ). However, in reality, little evi- dence points to substantive two-way engagement between candidates and voters (Baxter and Marcella 2012 ). Social media expand the possible ways and methods of campaigning, but scholars found only minimal effects concerning its impact over the amount of public attention received. For instance, Hong and Nadler ( 2012 ) found Twitter activities did not lead to a signifi cant amount of mentions on Twitter.
Prior to the social media era, independent candidates have had a very limited repertoire of campaign activities to carry out. Independent candidates have to make great efforts and spend much resources to reach out to the electorate: distributing leafl ets to the public, visiting voters , and making public speeches. Social media provide a low-cost tool for large-scale communication that transcends temporal and geographical constraints. Sina Weibo is the most popular micro-blogging service platform in China (Shen 2014a ). The platform has made a considerable impact on Chinese politics since its inception in August 2009. Ping Liu, a female worker laid- off from her job, was the fi rst person to express her intention to run in the LPC elec- tions on Sina Weibo (Sina Micro-blogging ). Following Liu, a group of independent candidates started to use social media for the elections. Overall, about 217 candi- dates announced their candidacy on Weibo in 2011 (He and Liu 2012 ).
Mobile Communication: Immediate Accessibility and Hyper-Coordination
Adding to the power of social media is the availability of pervasive mobile technol- ogy. Mobile communication technology diffuses around the world at a phenomenal speed (Castells et al. 2004 ). The Chinese telecommunication and information indus- try developed rapidly under the control of the state in the past few decades (Lu and Weber 2007 ). According to CNNIC ( 2015 ), as of June 2015, there were 669 million internet users in China, among whom 594 million were mobile internet users.
Almost all (88 %) of smartphone users are connected to the internet with their phone.
Mobile communication technologies have a few frequently discussed key func- tions. First, mobile phone as a personal device is primarily for maintaining social
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network ties (Ling 2004 , 2008 ; Wei and Lo 2006 ). Second, people use mobile com- munication technology to seek information (Wei and Lo 2006 ). Third, people also use mobile phones for entertainment purposes (Wei 2008 ). In terms of technological attributes, mobile phone is known for its mobility and immediate accessibility (Leung and Wei 2000 ) along with high degrees of selectivity and control (Campbell and Kwak 2011 ).
Mobile communication has different implications for politics. First, mobile phone use facilitates political involvement (Campbell and Kwak 2011 ). The use of mobile communication technologies in general is a positive predictor of civic par- ticipation but technology competence and age were found as important moderators of the relationship (Campbell and Kwak 2010 , 2011 ). But in comparison to its impacts on procedural politics, the mobile phone demonstrates a much more vibrant role in civic and political mobilization across the world (Dahlgren 2005 ). For instance, ousting a president in the Philippines (Castells et al. 2004 ), organizing protests against government setting up chemical plants in Xiamen, China (Liu 2013 ), and combating election fraud in Africa (Rheingold 2008 ).
Ling and Yttri ( 2002 ) coined the term “hyper-coordination” to describe the fact that mobile phone users are in constant interaction with others and therefore plans could be changed according to other individuals’ decisions. Similarly, Rheingold ( 2008 ) use the concept “smart mobs” to capture the political collective action and coordination using mobile communication technologies. Katz ( 2007 ) argues the use of mobile phone leads to the “emptying out” of public space effect , where mobile phone users are psychologically engaged elsewhere than where their bodies are.
Some theorists predicted that the adoption of mobile technology would bring social revolution (Rheingold 2002 ) and mobile phones could be used as democratic tools (Hermanns 2008 ).
In sum, expediency in information dissemination, network formation, and a more autonomous communication outlet seem to be the most important functions of social media advocacy , whereas immediate accessibility and hyper-coordination are the advantages of mobile communication. Armed with these two communication tools, did Chinese grassroots LPC candidates outperform the Party endorsed candi- dates? The direct answer to this question is “no.” The success rate of voter- nominated candidates is only about 10 %, according to past research (Lei 2009 , p. 82).
There are reasons that account for the low success rate. First, as mentioned above, administrative, legal, and extralegal means are used by the government to prevent independent candidates from winning, or even running. Second, despite the availability of new communication tools, free expression is rather limited in China.
To control the domestic cyberspace, the government commands a large variety of measures, including promoting self-censoring, deploying human censors and Internet police force, and recruiting paid commentators (Shen 2014b ). Furthermore, the government utilizes social media to its own advantage (Poell et al. 2014 ).
Bamman et al. ( 2012 ) found that politically sensitive terms have anomalously higher rates of deletion on social media.
Even though it comes with no surprise that the chance of independent candidates to win is rather dim, it is still a worthy topic to study. Given the restrained political
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and media environment in China, how did grassroots political actors make use of the new technologies, and with what effects ? In the existing literature, independent can- didates’ campaigning activities and advocacy strategies have received little schol- arly attention. Some political science scholars in China (He and Liu 2012 ; Lu 2012 ; Wang 2013 ) noticed the new phenomenon of social media campaigning, but few have systematically examined independent candidates’ social media use behavior and the use of mobile devices. Against this background, this study will raise four exploratory research questions.
RQ1: How frequently did independent candidates of different backgrounds use social media and mobile devices during their campaign period?
RQ2: How did the use of mobile devices infl uence the features of social media posts posted by the independent candidates?
RQ3: How was the use of mobile social media for campaigning related to media exposure and social media attention?
RQ4: How was the use of mobile social media related to the process and the out- come of the elections?