Influence for Hire: The Chinese ‘Internet Water Army’

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Hong Li, whose interest is in ‘grey actors’ in online public opinion. The case study here is the ‘Internet water army’: a group of users who are paid to post online comments on Chinese social media platforms in order to promote vested interests. This is an astroturfing effort for public relations and media manipulation, and has become a major social media industry in China.

Such users are ‘grey actors’ who manipulate public opinion; they cannot be easily distinguished from ordinary users since they often are ordinary users making some money on the side; bots and other automated accounts are also used here. Algorithmic detection techniques do not necessarily identify these actors successfully, and therefore do not help ordinary users identify when they are encountering such grey actors.

This study therefore explores the tools and approaches available to detect such actors. Targeted contexts (themes of posting), automation and intelligence (use of human and/or automated accounts), user availability (for recruitment into Internet water armies), potential capabilities (in content generation), and affiliated platforms (used for content dissemination and discussion) should all be considered in this process.

Key Internet water arm ecosystem build sets are marketing agencies that collaprate closely with online platforms; they often just reassemble public content and do not yet use AI substantially. Python and JavaScript are widely used for their activities, and the code they use is only partially shared online. The products they offer provide simple amplification and artificial social connection services, comment generation is more rare; they usually operate across multiple platforms, focussing especially on Weibo and TikTok and less on WeChat.