China’s ruling Communist Party took extensive steps in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak to control the narrative surrounding the virus and fight public opinion.
This comes amid reports by Pro-Publica and the New York Times, which detail documents leaked by a hacker group that calls itself “CCP Unmasked.”
These documents show thousands of directives and memos reportedly from the country’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, working to make the virus appear less threatening and authorities seem as if they were competently handling the situation.
This included using specialized software, which allowed the government to track online trends, coordinate censorship activity and manage fake social media accounts. These directives date back as far as early January. This also included ordering news sites to use only government-published reports and not to compare the virus with the SARS outbreak of 2002.