Fighting Bogus Reports

Beijing Review, August 24, 2011

As people across China mourned the tragic loss of life in the high-speed train crash on July 23 near Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, Internet forums were awash with comments, expressing sadness and anger at the accident. But as millions of messages were posted and reposted, ordinary Internet users began to struggle to discern which pieces of information were accurate and which were misleading.

A netizen self-proclaimed Guo Yao posted a piece of information on Sina Weibo, a twitter-like micro-blog service, on July 29, claiming her 100-day-old baby, Wang Yixuan, died in the accident but was not on the list of victims.

Micro-blog users including Wu Danhong, an associate professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, examined the pictures Guo had posted, and found they weren't authentic. It has been confirmed the blogger didn't actually lose her baby in the Wenzhou accident.

In this digital age, misleading information spreads at extraordinary speed over the Internet. Micro-blogging platforms in particular, allow information and disinformation to be disseminated at an unprecedented pace.

"Facing the challenge of disinformation, Internet users, the government and site operators are wondering how to manage the micro-blogosphere," said Dou Hanzhang, a Beijing-based researcher who helped form an anti-misinformation group on Sina Weibo earlier this year.