The Chinese government is influencing search results for a number of keywords relating to topics like Covid-19 and the treatment of the country's Uyghur Mulsim population, a new report has concluded.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a common tool – and professional discipline – companies utilize to drive more traffic to their web pages, with many website builders now offering long lists of SEO features.
It’s hardly common to see SEO used for geopolitical gain. Considering Google’s reach, however, it's entirely unsurprising that one of the world's superpowers has seen it as an opportunity to disseminate information.
China’s Search Engine Soft Power
The study, conducted by the Brookings Institution and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, compiled 120 days’ worth of data from Google Search, Google News, Bing Search, Bing News, and YouTube.
It focused on search terms relating to Covid-19 and the Xinjiang region of China, both points of geopolitical contention for Xi Jinping's party.
“Beijing is quite focused on positioning itself as a responsible global leader and softening perceptions to the contrary” – Winning the web: How Beijing exploits search results to shape views of Xinjiang and COVID-19.
The country has faced criticism for mishandling the initial outbreak of Covid-19 before it wreaked havoc across the world, as well as committing a catalog of human rights abuses – as well as genocide – against the local Muslim Uyghur population in the Xinjiang region.
The SEO...
Read Full Story: https://tech.co/news/seo-propaganda-tool-china-study
Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.
