Contained are links to a set of 9,054 sensitive Chinese keywords, which combine 13 existing lists. These keywords may be helpful to researchers who are searching for censored content in Chinese or testing for network interference.
We investigate what keywords might trigger censorship via automatic review in Sina Weibo and followed the pathways a typical censored post might take on Chinese social media.
Working with the just-released China Chats keyword list, Jason Q. Ng extended The Citizen Lab/UNM’s analysis by checking whether each of the 4,256 keywords was blocked from searching on Sina Weibo. This report includes further analysis and examination of other potential censorship tactics by Weibo revealed in the data.
In this Tea Leaf Nation article, Citizen Lab Google Policy Fellow Jason Q. Ng examines the recent changes to censorship on Sina Weibo.