Fighting Bogus Reports

Beijing Review, August 24, 2011

Vigilante misinformation hunters

It's not just micro-blogging service providers that are taking up challenge in dispelling misinformation. In May, a number of civic-minded netizens, including Dou Hanzhang, set up the Anti-misinformation League on Sina Weibo to help other micro-blog users identify false information.

The group is a collaborative effort that includes scholars, media professionals, lawyers, and university students, many of whom have never met each other. They communicate through instant postings.

"We work voluntarily and we do it because we love refuting misinformation," said Dou, a former financial commentator at the Xinhua News Agency.

Since its establishment, the Anti-misinformation League has refuted more than 150 pieces of misinformation and has already attracted more than 10,000 followers.

After a heavy downpour in Beijing on June 23, a micro-blogger posted seven photos on the Internet, showing submerged cars on the streets and water leaking into the Taoranting Subway Station and other scenes of flooding.

While the images were reposted by thousands of users, the Anti-misinformation League said the images were fake. For example, photos purportedly showing the Beijing Capital International Airport inundated in several feet of water were found to be actually of an airport in south China's Hainan Province several years ago.

"We're the clean freaks of misinformation, and we feel it's incumbent on us to refute as many misinformation as possible," Dou said.

"We live in an age of new media, so we cannot use old methods to verify misinformation. We cannot wait for traditional media channels to verify the facts through their administrative departments and then release a formal announcement. We need to fight misinformation while they're spreading. I think this is the best way to deal with misinformation today," said a journalist with the Xinhua News Agency known as Dianzizheng in the micro-blogosphere, who volunteers for Dou's group.

Compared with Sina Weibo's investigative team, Dou's group is quicker to act and judge. "We're much more flexible than Sina Weibo's team, since it wants 100-percent certainty and proof," Dianzizheng said.

Although the Anti-misinformation League has been increasingly active in the battle against Internet misinformation, Dou said the government should take more responsibility and step in to deny misinformation in the face of major disasters.

"Providing reliable information is supposed to be a government's duty," Dou said.

In Dianzizheng's mind, many misinformation stem from government departments' slow response and vague explanations.

"The clarifications made by the government are often late and perfunctory," he said. "In some cases, people don't trust officials' efforts to deal with issues involving their own incompetence or mistakes because they fail to act responsibly."

"The government needs to adopt an open attitude and increase its transparency," Dianzizheng said.