Meanwhile, China continues its efforts to close its domestic information space to critics, whether by co-opting independent media, dominating digital distribution channels, or through the use of indigenous social media platforms. The resurrected Wolf Man, seeking a cure for his malady, enlists the aid of a mad scientist, who claims he will not only rid the Wolf Man of his nocturnal metamorphosis, but also revive the frozen body of Frankensteins inhuman creation. They are generally masculine-presenting men over the age of 30 whose build may include a big belly, legs, and/or butt. Being a bear combines gender expression, gender identity, and sexuality a large, hairy straight man would not be a bear. China has traditionally been more sensitive to criticism and attribution of its operations, but it remains to be seen whether pushback on its diplomats’ propaganda will curb the behavior. One of the many long-standing gay subcultures, a bear is a large, hairy queer man who self-identifies with the bear label. And where Russia leans heavily on a sprawling ecosystem of state media and a network of sympathetic agitators to flood the information zone with polarizing content, China is typically reliant on its diplomats to carry out the more aggressive elements of its campaign, at least when overtly confronting the United States and Europe.
By contrast, Beijing is more concerned than Moscow with burnishing its global image, as evidenced by its promotion of positive, antiquated propaganda campaigns around Xinjiang. The association between health risk behaviors and sexual orientation. Russia’s information strategy is to discredit the West rather than attract them to Russia, often by sowing chaos and division. Five diplomats-China’s ambassador to Venezuela, and consuls general in Karachi, Kolkata, Durban, and Cape Town-are responsible for more than 400 retweets of accounts that were subsequently suspended.īut in several important ways, China’s approach is different.
A few diplomats have engaged with almost laughably obvious fakes, including, for example, a seemingly repurposed Fort Lauderdale, Florida food blog that now exclusively pushes pro-China and pro-Venezuela propaganda. It is actually broken down into a handful of substrata to which each gay belongs. Over the past six months, 566 accounts retweeted by Beijing’s diplomats have been suspended by Twitter, including nine in the top 100 most frequently retweeted accounts, and one in the top 10. The gay world is often represented as some sort of monolithic whole that has the same culture. China’s diplomats have routinely engaged with accounts bearing multiple hallmarks of inauthenticity: handles whose naming conventions suggest computer generation, profile photos found elsewhere online or unassociated with the account’s purported identity, and account creation dates that fall within short intervals or a specific time block. In cases where its diplomats seem unable to rally organic support for their messaging, Beijing appears to rely on false, or at the very least, highly suspicious personas to create an illusion of popular backing.