Essay series #1 Comparing Chinese Blogs and Big Character Posters. Part 2.

Continued from Part 1.

Unlike dazibao, not any literate person can blog. Blogging requires one to have sufficient technology, and, more importantly, because accessing the Internet (and all of the information that it is compromised of) is a prerequisite to blogging, a blogger is likely to be, on average, less parochial than the dazibao writer. Finally, because anything a blogger posts online can be stored, recalled at a later date, and, in most instances, traced to the originator, a blogger’s postings tend to be moderate; shameful posts could haunt bloggers in the future, and they can be held accountable for their posts. Yet, in this sense, because the government may be able to track down and prosecute bloggers who write contrary to the party line, blogs are less inherently ‘safe’ as a free-speech medium than dazibao.

Because of its constrained physical size, few expect the dazibao to include the evidence or sources that back up any accusation, praise, or debate it propagates. This tendency, in conjunction with the ability of the author to remain anonymous, fosters rumor, slander, unaccountability, and extreme writing. Indeed, according to historian Lu Xing, “sloganeering and the rhetoric of agitation became the main features” [2] of dazibao, and “the issue of whether [they] were true or false was totally left to the judgment of the reader” [3]. In contrast, respected bloggers back up their posts with sources and evidence. Because it’s easy for them to provide links to their sources, readers expect them to do so. If a blogger makes claims but does not provide evidence, readers have less respect for the post.

A dazibao can be posted in a physical spot. When readers come to view it, they form a crowd. As the physical incarnation of a message, a dazibao acts as a rallying point. Crowds often develop mob mentality, whose members, absorbed with emotion, rarely care to exercise logic or individual evaluation. This tendency is exacerbated by their not expecting dazibao to validate itself with sources. As a newcomer approaches the excited mob, he’s less likely to evaluate the message as an individual, and more likely to get caught up in the spirit. “After all,” this newcomer thinks, “if all of these people are so agitated by the dazibao’s message, not only is it something important, what it’s saying is surely true.”

Blog posts, on the other hand, have no physical location. Readers look at blog posts on their own time, on their individual computers. Readers evaluate the blog post on its own merit, and never find themselves in the midst of a beast-like, frenzied, mob. It is impossible for someone to take a blog condemning someone and affix it to their body in the middle of a public square [4].

[2] Xing Lu. A Rhetorical Analysis of Wall Posters. University of South Carolina Press: Columbia, 2004. p. 75.
[3] ibid. 84
[4] ibid. 73