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Can Social Media Clear the Air? A Case

Study of the Air Pollution Problem in
Chinese Cities
a a a
Samuel Kay , Bo Zhao & Daniel Sui
a
The Ohio State University
Published online: 01 Dec 2014.

To cite this article: Samuel Kay, Bo Zhao & Daniel Sui (2014): Can Social Media Clear the Air?
A Case Study of the Air Pollution Problem in Chinese Cities, The Professional Geographer, DOI:
10.1080/00330124.2014.970838

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2014.970838

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 Can Social Media Clear the Air? A Case Study of the Air Pollution
Problem in Chinese Cities

Samuel Kay, Bo Zhao, and Daniel Sui

The Ohio State University

Since the U.S. Embassy in Beijing placed an air quality sensor on its roof and began publishing the results on Twitter in 2008, air
quality has gained widespread attention on Chinese microblogs. When the Chinese government introduced new air quality
standards in 2012, some hailed this as a victory for Chinese microbloggers, signifying the emergence of social media as a
democratizing force leading to greater citizen power. Using a representative sample of microblog posts collected from October
2012 to June 2013 on the topic of air pollution, as well as contextual information from a variety of sources, we examine how the
government, companies, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals approach the Chinese social media landscape. We find
that although microblogs are capable of empowering citizens to advance an environmental cause, social media have also been
increasingly employed by the government as a tool for social monitoring and control and by companies as a platform for
profiting from air pollution. Key Words: air pollution, Chinese cities, social media, urban political ecology.

自从2008年美国驻北京大使馆在屋顶安置了一个空气品质感应器，并开始在推特上发表侦测结果以来，空气品质便在中国
Downloaded by [24.209.216.120] at 07:03 02 December 2014

的微博得到广泛的关注。当中国政府于2012年引进新的空气品质标准时，部分人士欢呼此为中国微博客的胜利，强调新兴
的社群媒体做为引领更强大的公民力量的民主化趋势。我们运用搜集自2012年十月至2013年六月中，在微博以空气污染
为主题所发表的文章之代表性案例，以及不同来源的脉络化信息，检视政府、企业、非政府组织与个人，如何应对中国的
社群媒体地景。我们发现，儘管微博能够对公民进行培力，以促进环境保育的目标，社群媒体却同时逐渐被政府使用作为
社会监控的工具，并被企业用来作为从空气污染中获利的平台。 关键词: 空气污染，中国城市，社群媒体，城市政治生
态学。

Desde cuando la Embajada de los EE.UU. en Beijing coloc
o en su techo un sensor de calidad del aire y empez

o a publicar los
registros en Twitter en 2008, la calidad del aire ha ganado vasta atenci
on en los microblog chinos. Cuando el gobierno chino
present
o nuevos est
andares sobre calidad del aire en 2012, algunos saludaron esta acci
on como una victoria de los
microblogueros chinos, vi
endola como el surgimiento de los medios sociales como una fuerza democratizadora que apuntaba
hacia un mayor empoderamiento ciudadano. Mediante el uso de una muestra representativa de correos de las microblog
recogida entre octubre de 2012 y junio de 2013 sobre el t
opico de la poluci
on a
erea, lo mismo que informaci
on contextual
obtenida de una variedad de fuentes, examinamos la forma como abocan el paisaje de los medios sociales chinos el gobierno, las
compa~ nías, las organizaciones no gubernamentales y los individuos. Descubrimos que si bien las microblog son capaces de
empoderar a los ciudadanos para promover una causa ambiental, los medios sociales tambi
en han sido crecientemente empleados
por el gobierno como una herramienta de monitoreo y control, y por las compa~ nías como una plataforma para beneficiarse con
on del aire. Palabras clave: poluci

el tema de la poluci
on a
erea, ciudades chinas, medios sociales, ecología política urbana.

Y ears of planning, billions of dollars, and untold

hours of labor went into the three-week-long
Summer Olympics that took place in Beijing, China,
in August 2008. Monumental stadiums were con-
structed, lines were added to the subway, and a termi-
nal was added to the airport; even the sky was made
ready. At the urging of the International Olympic
Committee (IOC), the Chinese government shut
down hundreds of factories, power plants, and con-
struction sites within a 150-km radius of Beijing;
removed millions of vehicles from the road; planted
trees to prevent sandstorms; and seeded clouds to
change the weather. These costly efforts resulted in a
significant reduction in air pollution in Beijing (Rich
et al. 2012). The emissions reduction coincided with a
drop in biomarkers of cardiovascular disease among
young adults, which increased again when the games
and air pollution reduction measures ended (Rich
et al. 2012). Although the measures taken to prepare
for the 2008 Summer Olympics cleared the skies and
temporarily improved health, they were short-lived.
In the years since the Olympics, air pollution has
worsened, but Chinese citizens have also become
more vocal about the issue than ever before, particu-
larly using the medium of microblogs. This article
examines the perplexing role of social media in the
debate over air pollution in Chinese cities.
For decades, the Chinese government blamed hazy
days on fog or dust. Publicly released government air
pollution reports completely ignored certain pollu-
tants such as PM2.5, airborne particulate matter 2.5
micrometers or less in diameter, which because of its
small size can penetrate deep into the cardiovascular
and respiratory systems (Rich et al. 2012). Starting in
2008, when the U.S. Embassy in Beijing began pub-
lishing air quality data on its official Twitter feed,
PM2.5 received more attention on Chinese social
media as microbloggers reposted and commented on

The Professional Geographer, 0(0) 2015, pages 1–13 © Copyright 2015 by Association of American Geographers.
Initial submission, September 2013; revised submissions, January and March 2014; final acceptance, March 2014.
Published by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
 2 Volume XX, Number X, Xxxxxxxxxxx 2015
the U.S. Embassy numbers, much to the consternation
of Chinese officials. In 2012, the central government
adopted new national air pollution standards, and by
early 2013 the air pollution problem led to unprece-
dented political transparency as municipal govern-
ments began to release PM2.5 readings and the news
media began to more freely report on the issue. These
developments have been hailed by some (Stout 2013;
Wong 2013) as a “bottom-up” victory for ordinary
people.
This article problematizes the role of the social
media landscape in the debate over air pollution as a
field for the creation and contestation of environmen-
tal knowledge and narratives. We examine the multi-
ple ways in which ideas about air pollution are
produced and contested by different users of Sina
Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging web site.
Taking a critical political ecology approach, we exam-
ine the intersection of the socioecological process of
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urbanization, its attendant environmental and social
problems, the neoliberalization of Chinese environ-
mental governance, and the role of social media in the
production and contestation of environmental knowl-
edge and narratives. Using the case study of the debate
over PM2.5 that has played out largely on microblogs,
we discuss whether social media represent an effective
(or ineffective), just (or unjust) new form of citizen
power in China and how they contribute to or detract
from the likelihood of adaptation and mitigation.
Social Media, Unfair Air, and China’s
Environmental Governance
Social Media in China: A “Liberation Technology?”
More than 500 million people use the Internet in
China, and more than 400 million of them use Sina
Weibo.1 Some herald the Internet and microblogs as a
possible step toward democratic civil society in China
(Hu 2010), but an elaborate and robust system of cen-
sorship enables the state to use the Internet and micro-
blogs for its own purposes, privileging the creation of
certain types of knowledge by certain types of people.
Scholars disagree over whether social media in China
will act as what Diamond (2012) calls a “liberation
technology,” perhaps bringing about more open, dem-
ocratic policy debates, or will instead contribute to a
broadening and deepening of government control
over public discourse.
Xiao (2011) argues that the Internet, although sub-
ject to government censorship, has created a new class
of “netizens” engaged in a relatively open “cyberpo-
litics” with real-world results. Censorship remains a
formidable force on the Chinese Internet (Warf
2010), but Xiao points to the clever ways in which
Chinese web users have resisted efforts at censorship,
such as the creation of the “grass mud horse.”2 Xiao
argues that the Chinese state has adapted to the Inter-
net by becoming more responsive to citizens and
allowing greater citizen participation in decision
making.
On the other hand, MacKinnon (2012) argues that
what has emerged out of the growth of the Internet in
China is a repressive “networked authoritarianism.”
The Chinese government has adapted to the spread of
the Internet and social media, she argues, by using it
as a surveillance tool to predict and prevent or rechan-
nel protests. This capability was demonstrated in May
2013 when officials in Chengdu, having caught wind
of the details of a protest against the construction of
an oil refinery through social media and text messages,
altered the work week (making Saturday, 4 May, a
workday) and deploying a heavy police and paramili-
tary presence near the site of the planned protest (Lim
2013). Social media, which allowed organizers to easily
communicate the details of the protest to a wide audi-
ence, also made it easy for the government to prevent
the protest and identify key organizers through their
positions in online networks.
Due to the socially and spatially uneven distribution
of Internet access and technological literacy in China,
many people are excluded from these networks (Xiao
2011). Weibo users are young—about 92 percent were
born since 1980—and highly educated; more than 70
percent of Weibo users have received higher educa-
tion (Sina Weibo 2013), compared to less than 9 per-
cent of the overall Chinese population (National
Bureau of Statistics of China 2011). Weibo has slightly
more female than male users, but male users are more
likely to have larger numbers of followers (Sun 2013).
Moreover, microblog posts are censored at widely dif-
ferent rates in different regions: 53 percent in Tibet
and Qinghai, compared to 12 percent in the eastern
provinces and cities (Bamman, O’Connor, and Smith
2012). China’s Internet censorship likewise takes sev-
eral different forms. A large number of outside web
sites and networks are blocked by the “Great Fire-
wall,” search terms are screened, and chat and micro-
blog posts are selectively deleted. In many cases,
censorship involves detaining or threatening to detain
outspoken bloggers. Internet companies are held
responsible for content posted on their sites, obligat-
ing them to carry out their own censorship activities
alongside those of the government (Xiao 2011; Bam-
man, O’Connor, and Smith 2012; Eaves 2012; Magis-
tad 2012). But censorship is not about completely
preventing the spread of any news or knowledge or
even government criticism. Many recent cases, such as
the discussion of the Bo Xilai scandal on microblogs,
show how the government will allow many online
debates to continue more or less unfettered as long as
these online discussions are not translated into orga-
nized political actions (King, Pan, and Roberts 2013).
Political Ecology of Urban Air Pollution
In 2011, China’s urban population outnumbered its
rural population for the first time. The United States
passed this threshold in 1920 and the world as a whole

is estimated to have passed it in 2007. As an increasing
proportion of the world’s population lives in cities,
scholars have engaged more deeply with urbanization
and society’s relationship with nature, in part through
the interdisciplinary field of urban political ecology
(UPE; Cronon 1991; Heynen, Kaika, and Swyngedouw
2006; Cook and Swyngedouw 2012). With roots in
Marxist analysis and historical materialism, UPE
rejects the notion that cities are not natural places and
investigates urbanization as a socioecological process
taking place within a context of uneven power struc-
tures. UPE examines the role of power and politics in
the production of “urban natures,” investigating “who
produces what kind of socio-ecological configurations
for whom” (Heynen, Kaika, and Swyngedouw 2006, 2).
Although much of the political ecology literature
has focused on natural resources such as water, miner-
als, and land, scholars have recently turned their atten-
tion to how power relations manifest in the air
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(Harper 2004; V
eron 2006; Buzzelli 2008; Whitehead
2009). Much air pollution research focuses on the
outdoors, but Biehler and Simon (2011) have called
on geographers to examine the indoors as political–
ecological spaces that are both socially produced and
inextricably linked with the outdoors. Although out-
door air is difficult to capture and commodify at the
human scale, air conditioning and filtration can pro-
duce clean air indoors, for a price.
Writing about Houston, Texas, Harper (2004, 309)
argues that air pollution is relatively egalitarian: “All
Americans, regardless of social standing, breathe pol-
luted air; and a number of middle-income white com-
munities . . . are near freeways and polluting
industries.” Indoor air filtration technologies, how-
ever, have the potential to counteract the ostensibly
nondiscriminatory behavior of air pollution. Those
who can afford to live in apartments, shop in malls,
and drive in vehicles equipped with this technology
consume clean air (and cardiovascular and respiratory
health) as a luxury good, especially when we consider
the fact that we as humans spend only 5 to 15 percent
of our entire life outdoors (Myers and Maynard 2005).
Paradoxically, although severe air pollution has been
shown to take an economic toll of possibly hundreds
of millions of dollars (Schmitz 2013), it creates oppor-
tunities for profit for a burgeoning filtration industry,
real estate developers, and others. Companies from
Haier and 3M to Geely-Volvo and Pond’s have moved
quickly to capitalize on the air pollution crisis.
China’s Environmental Governance
Scholars have recently noted a neoliberal turn in Chi-
na’s environmental governance characterized in part
by the emergence of “ecological modernization” as a
dominant state narrative (Carter and Mol 2006; Yeh
2009). This narrative “privileges entrepreneurship and
market dynamics in creating environmental solutions”
(Yeh 2009, 884). Yeh argues that Chinese ecological
modernization favors technical solutions over political
Social Media and Air Pollution in Chinese Cities 3
innovations. This bias is evident in the Chinese state’s
policies toward PM2.5. Since more openly acknowl-
edging the existence of the air pollution problem in
2012, the state has undertaken extensive air pollution
monitoring efforts similar to but technologically far
more advanced than London’s twentieth-century
urban smoke observers (Whitehead 2009).
The Chinese state contends that the air pollution
problem can be solved through the adoption of new
technologies rather than any fundamental shift in Chi-
na’s political or economic structures, treating air pol-
lution as a scientific problem, not a political problem.
The state’s use of social media to disseminate its del-
uge of air pollution data (and drown out alternative
data and opinions through censorship) can be thought
of as a kind of technologically mediated political inno-
vation, albeit one that is meant to maintain a political
and social status quo.
Grumbine (2007) argues that China’s rise is driven
by government policy decisions, globalization, and the
scale of development and is constrained by environ-
mental degradation, political instability, coal and oil
consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions. We argue
that through its adoption of a narrative of ecological
modernization, China’s leadership is trying to turn
environmental degradation to their advantage by using
the air pollution problem to advance a regime of urban
atmospheric governance that contributes to the politi-
cal and social status quo. Yeh (2009, 885) reminds us
that “environmental projects are always more than
environmental projects.” Through narratives such as
ecological modernization, China’s leaders are respond-
ing to environmental problems in ways that strengthen
their continued rule. According to Wang (2013), the
central government has turned to cadre evaluation as a
way to reduce air pollution, devolving responsibility for
pollution reduction to governors, mayors, and state-
owned enterprises, while also demanding continued
economic growth. Wang argues that this policy is
designed to limit risks to the regime’s hold on power,
using environmental protection to further the goals of
economic growth and social stability. This form of
accountability encourages local leaders to bend the
rules by falsifying pollution numbers or concealing the
operation of major pollution sources (Ma 2011; Wang
2013). Citizen science and crowd mapping could offer
new powerful ways to rectify these problems in China’s
environmental governance (Sui 2013b).
In summary, by situating this article in the broader
context of recent research on social media, UPE, and
environmental governance in China, we aim to shed
light on the ways in which multiple actors use social
media to tackle the air pollution issue in China. We
argue that although it is encouraging that a peaceful
outpouring of clearly articulated public opinion over
social media helped prompt an authoritarian regime to
change national environmental laws, we should be
mindful that the debate over air pollution and the
regime’s response is more than a straightforward vic-
tory for social media as a liberation technology.
 4 Volume XX, Number X, Xxxxxxxxxxx 2015
Chinese Urban Air Pollution and Social
Media: A Case Study
Air pollution is closely associated with China’s
changing position within the global economic sys-
tem. The main sources of air pollution in Chinese
cities include industry, construction, vehicles, and
household pollution (Hao and Wang 2005). Pollut-
ing industries come to China in part through the
process of international dirty industry migration
(DIM), which means that some of the pollution is
essentially being offshored from the United States
and other countries that import manufactured goods
from China (Mehra and Das 2007; Lu 2008; Sui
2013a). Among air pollutants, airborne particulate
matter (PM) can be especially harmful, contributing
to cardiopulmonary disease (Kappos 2011) and
decreased life expectancy (Chen et al. 2013). The
smaller the particle, the more harmful it is. Partially
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for this reason, PM2.5 was quickly able to capture
the attention of Chinese microbloggers.
The recent social media debate over PM2.5 in
China was spurred in part by the decision in August
2008 of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to install an air
quality monitor on its rooftop and publish real-time
readings on Twitter every hour (Figure 1). At the
time, Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau
(EPB) did not widely collect or publicize PM2.5 levels
but instead based its air quality announcements on
other pollutants, such as PM10.3 In 2009, Chinese
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) representatives met
with U.S. State Department officials to protest the
publication of the readings. According to a leaked
State Department cable, MFA representatives com-
plained that the data released on the Twitter feed
“conflicted” with “official” Beijing EPB data, causing
“confusion” and “undesirable ‘social consequences’
Figure 1 PM2.5 monitoring device mounted on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing (Source: Reuters/U.S. Embassy
Press Office). (Color figure available online.)
among the Chinese public” (U.S. State Department
2009).
Undesirable social consequences and confusion did
indeed ensue, as Chinese microbloggers took notice of
the disparity between the U.S. Twitter feed and offi-
cial EPB assessments. During a period in 2011 when
PM2.5 readings went off the chart (beyond index) of
the U.S. Embassy Twitter feed, key opinion leaders
on Weibo, including Pan Shiyi, a prominent real
estate developer, organized an informal vote on
Weibo calling for stricter air quality standards.
In January 2012, the Beijing EPB started reporting
PM2.5 levels, and on 1 March 2012, the State Council
adopted new nationwide air quality standards that
included PM2.5 for the first time. Official state media
reported the new standards as a victory for microblog-
gers under the headline “PM2.5 in air quality stand-
ards, positive response to net campaign” (Xinhua
2012). The debate over air pollution in China is ongo-
ing. In January 2013, several days of severe air pollu-
tion again prompted a social media outcry but—for
the first time—also garnered significant coverage in
state media outlets and relatively open discussion by
officials. Off-the-chart pollution levels were widely
reported in Chinese and Western news outlets (Wong
2013). In January 2014, the government announced
that it would require major polluters to begin releasing
near-real-time air quality measurements.
In the period of a few years, air pollution went from
a taboo subject with data either not collected or
shrouded in secrecy to a sensitive but widely discussed
issue. Near-real-time air pollution readings from a
dizzying array of sources are now available to techno-
logically savvy Chinese citizens. The rapidly shifting
debate about urban air pollution in China has changed
the way the government, corporations, and citizens
talk about, think about, and adapt to the polluted air.

The central role of microblogs in the air pollution
debate has prompted hopes that social media can act
as a stand-in for a democratic process—a kind of gov-
ernment-by-crowd-sourcing—and that the social
media landscape could be rich territory for occupation
by activists. To assess these possibilities, we took a
closer look at the air pollution debate as it unfolded on
Sina Weibo, asking who is posting (and where), what
they are posting, who gets the most attention, and to
what extent these answers align with an “even” social
media landscape conducive to open, democratic dis-
cussions, or an “uneven” authoritarian landscape.
Data and Methods
We draw on a number of sources to examine the social
media–driven debate over air pollution in Chinese cit-
ies, including Weibo posts, collected from October
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2012 to June 2013; official and unofficial media cover-
age in China; advertisements for various air pollution–
related products; diplomatic communications; govern-
ment reports; and public statements made by officials.
Methodologically, this article is tied to the grow-
ing literature on using mapping and analyzing social
media data (Tsou and Leitner 2013; Xu, Wong, and
Yang 2013). The primary object of our analysis is
the debate over air pollution on Weibo. Using a
purpose-built crawler, we collected about 250,000
statuses, reposts and comments from about 127,000
Weibo users from October 2012 through June
20134 with a six-day gap in January 2013. Most
social media sites have an application programming
interface (API) for the purpose of collecting an
unbiased subset of data. We employed a heuristic
procedure, first collecting sample posts to identify
Figure 2 Web crawler procedure for harvesting Sina Weibo data. API D application programming interface.
Social Media and Air Pollution in Chinese Cities 5
key terms relevant to the topic and then using those
key terms to collect our data set. The terms we used
to collect our sample were PM2.5, PM, haze, air
pollution, xikeliwu,5 and air quality.
Using the Sina Weibo search topic API, our data-
base of microblogs containing these terms was contin-
uously updated. The data were then cleaned and
geocoded. One of our primary analytical tools was to
measure the frequency of different terms in our data
set. Unlike English, words in Chinese are not sepa-
rated by spaces, so calculating terms’ frequencies first
required word segmentation analysis. To accomplish
this, we integrated ICTCLAS (Zhang et al. 2003)—a
popular Chinese-language analytical module—into
the Weibo crawler.
To create a spatial–temporal model of the data, it
was necessary to geocode the posts. Posts from Global
Positioning System (GPS)-enabled devices already
included latitude and longitude coordinates. To
extrapolate approximate location from nongeocoded
posts, the crawler took the location information from
the user profile, and attempted to find corresponding
coordinates first in the gazetteer database and, if
unsuccessful, in pygeocoder, a Python library that
makes use of Google’s geocoding functionality. Next,
the data were checked for semantic and logic areas.
Using this process, the sample was collected from
Weibo, cleaned, geocoded, and built into a database.
Figure 2 illustrates this process.
Results and Discussion
The Chinese central government (eventually)
responded to the PM2.5 debate by acknowledging an
air pollution problem, setting new air pollution
 6 Volume XX, Number X, Xxxxxxxxxxx 2015

Table 1 Attributes of the top 20 most influential users

Type Weighted
English name Name of user Location Gender Verified in degree

Shanghai Municipal Report 上海发布 G Shanghai M True 40,960

Yan Tang 唐嫣 I Shanghai F True 3,878
Pangaoshou Medical 白云山潘高寿 C Guangdong M True 3,834
Haier Air-Conditioning 海尔空调 C Shandong F True 3,425
Ponds 旁氏Ponds C Shanghai F True 3,161
Tongchenhui – Sina corp 微博同城会 C Beijing M True 2,714
Philips China 飞利浦中国 C Shanghai M True 2,640
I’ve been here_99857 我有来了_99857 I Beijing M False 2,557
Practical Tips 实用小百科 N Guangdong F False 2,017
Cado Air Purifier Cado蓝光空气净化器 C Shanghai M True 1,682
Tianjin Municipal Report 天津市政府新闻办发布 G Tianjin M True 1,627
Sichuan Happenings 四川身边事 C Sichuan M True 1,616
Hyyakite 海尔凯特 I Japan M False 1,497
Wei Qi 戚薇 I Beijing F True 1,369
Shanghai Bayan E-Commerce 上海芭妍电子商务有限公司 C Shanghai F True 1,329
Zhaopin.com 智联招聘 C Beijing M True 1,303
Volvo Safety 沃尔沃汽车安全控 C Beijing M True 1,287
Chengdu Municipal Report 成都发布 G Sichuan M True 1,188
Downloaded by [24.209.216.120] at 07:03 02 December 2014

Chao Xu Environmental Researcher 徐超-环保研究员 I Beijing M False 1,107

Beijing real-time PM25 北京实时PM25 N Beijing F False 1,013

Note: C D company; G D government; I D individual; N D nongovernmental organization.

guidelines, and introducing new enforcement mecha-
nisms. Although many (including, notably, the Chi-
nese government) hail these steps as a victory for
microbloggers, bolstering the hopes that Sina Weibo
and other social media will become democratizing
“liberation technologies” in China, our analysis of the
data also show how companies, the government, and a
few opinion leaders have shaped the discussion along
narrow—and profitable—lines. The most influential
users in the debate were almost entirely comprised of
government sources, companies, or famous
individuals.
We first address the question of who participated in
the social media debate and where they were. One way
of assessing the extent to which a social media debate
reflects the sentiment of the general public is to see
whether the participants in the debate roughly match
the general public demographically. As discussed earlier,
Sina Weibo users tend to be younger, more educated,
and more affluent than the Chinese population as a
whole. Our analysis shows that participants in this par-
ticular debate are even more out of line with the Chinese
population than the general pool of Sina Weibo users.
Mao Zedong famously declared that Chinese
women “hold up half the sky,” but our analysis shows
that they are underrepresented in the social media
debate over the pollutants in that sky. The underrep-
resentation of women in this debate is particularly sig-
nificant in a country where only about 10 percent of
provincial party elites are female (Su 2006) and female
legislators attending the eighteenth party congress
were described by state media as “beautiful scenery”
(People’s Daily 2012). Female users are estimated to
slightly outnumber male users of Sina Weibo (Sun
2013), but our data show that the opposite is true for
participants in this debate; female users account for
only 46.5 percent of users participating in the air
pollution debate. The disparities only get more
extreme when looking at the most influential users
measured by weighted in degree, a measure of users’
importance to a debate.6
We found that the top 1 percent of users in our sam-
ple (measured by weighted in degree), numbering
1,270, account for over 80 percent of the total
weighted in degree. The top 0.01 percent (127 out of
a pool of about 127,000 users) account for over 60 per-
cent of the weighted in degree. In other words, 127
users hold about 60 percent of the influence among a
group of 127,000. This elite group deserves closer
scrutiny. Table 1 shows the attributes of the top
twenty users—the elite of the elite.
We found that most of the users with the highest
weighted in degree were not individuals but were gov-
ernment agencies, nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), and companies. Of the top 0.01 percent of
users, just 20 percent are individuals. At the time of
writing, all accounts on Weibo—including those not
associated with an individual person—are required to
identify as either male or female. Of the top 0.01 per-
cent of users, 56 percent identified themselves as male.
Among the subgroups (government, company, NGO,
or individual), slight majorities of companies and
NGOs identified as female (51 percent and 52 percent,
respectively), whereas 64 percent of the individual
accounts and nearly 90 percent of the government
accounts identified themselves as male.
By geocoding the Sina Weibo users, we are able to
map out the geographical distribution of the top twenty
users and their level of influence by weighted in degree
(Figure 3). Four urban clusters clearly dominated in
the debate. Not surprisingly, three (Beijing/Tianjin,
Shanghai, and Guangzhou/Shenzhen) out of the four
urban clusters are located in the eastern, economically
more prosperous region of China. Only one of these
 Social Media and Air Pollution in Chinese Cities 7
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Figure 3 Spatial distribution of the top twenty Sina Weibo users in the air pollution debate measured by weighted in
degree, a measure of how influential a user’s posts are (generated by Wordle). Note: C D company, G D government; I D
individual; N D nongovernmental organizations. (Color figure available online.)

urban clusters—Chengdu—is located in the Western
interior, showing that concerns about air quality are
not simply confined to the more crowded east.
Although these four clusters are dominant in the
debate, air pollution is increasingly becoming an issue
in smaller cities. Figure 3 reveals that concerns over air
quality are spiraling down the urban hierarchy, as evi-
denced by the increasing proliferation of discussions on
air pollution in second and even third-tier cities.
We now turn our attention to the content users
posted on Weibo. In general, the social media debate
emphasizes adaptation and steps that individuals can
take (e.g., buying an air filter or staying indoors),
deemphasizing steps that society generally and the
government specifically could take (e.g., new petro-
leum standards, shutting down coal plants, or paying
for air pollution–related health care). A word cloud
(Figure 4) gives a basic overview of some of the main

Figure 4 This word cloud shows the top 150 high-frequency terms from our data set generated by Wordle.
 8 Volume XX, Number X, Xxxxxxxxxxx 2015
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Figure 5 A stream graph shows the changing magnitude of number of posts as well as the changing top terms over the
time period of our study.

terms appearing in posts, and a stream graph
(Figure 5) gives a sense of the changing magnitude of
posts over time as well as the changing top terms dur-
ing the period of our study.
Although the social media debate contributed to
new government air quality standards, ostensibly
benefiting everyone equally, these standards have yet
to produce meaningful reductions in pollution levels.
At the same time, companies have shrewdly used social
media to advertise products for adaptation. Although
the goal of many participants in the Sina Weibo
debate might have been to achieve cleaner air for all,
the result thus far has been an increasingly wide gap
between those few who can afford luxury adaptation
technologies and the vast majority of the Chinese pop-
ulation who cannot.
What is contained in some of the most influential
posts? Periodically, Pan Shiyi—with 16.6 million fol-
lowers and counting—posts the official Chinese and
U.S. air quality readings for various cities (Figure 6).
He also frequently posts about going for jogs in the
park (when the air is clear enough) and installing top-
of-the-line air filtration systems in his company’s
buildings. With his posts, Pan is perpetuating an

Figure 6 A sample of Pan Shiyi’s Weibo posts dated 14 December 2013 showing the composite air quality index (from
left to right) of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The official Chinese numbers (top) are juxtaposed with the U.S.
Embassy or Consulate readings (bottom) (Source: Sina Weibo). (Color figure available online.)
 Social Media and Air Pollution in Chinese Cities 9
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Figure 7 Air filtration system advertisement by Haier on Weibo. (The advertisement states that “using the most
advanced technology for the filtration of PM2.5,” Haier’s product will enable customers to “breathe healthier air.”)
(Source: Sina Weibo). (Color figure available online.)

environmental imaginary in which clean air and a
healthy lifestyle are consumable goods. As a celebrity
real estate developer, he has every reason to do this; it
increases the value of his company’s buildings as well as
his own cachet. Pan is not alone in the endeavor of com-
modifying clean air. Chinese companies such as Haier
and multinationals such as 3M advertise air filtration
systems on Weibo (Figure 7). Haier advertises a basic
model for 9,999 Yuan, which is slightly less than half
the median per capita income for urban residents in
2011 (23,979 Yuan) and surpasses the median per capita
income of rural residents (6,977 Yuan) in the same year
(National Bureau of Statistics of China 2012).
Companies that sell air filters and real estate devel-
opers who sell buildings with filtered air are obvious
candidates for posting air pollution advertisements in
the microblogosphere, but they are hardly alone in the
rush to profit from pollution. Pond’s, a brand of
beauty and hygiene products owned by international
corporation Unilever, was quick to bring a line of
PM2.5-fighting beauty products to market, advertised
in part by the personal Weibo accounts of celebrity
 10 Volume XX, Number X, Xxxxxxxxxxx 2015
actresses such as Tang Yan (唐嫣). Tang Yan and a
handful of other users were in large part responsible
for the sudden increase in occurrences of the word
skin (皮肤) during April and May 2013 (Figure 5).
During April and May, among the top thirty posts
including the word skin receiving the most reposts,
twenty-five made mention of Pond’s. These twenty-
five posts were reposted a total of 138 times. This
kind of sudden popularity for a term is suggestive of
the presence of the “online water army” (网络水军), a
group of Internet users paid by companies to promote
their products. Our analysis showed that companies
significantly influenced the popularity of certain terms
with or without the water army. For instance, Sam-
sung contributed to the popularity of the term fog dur-
ing the first few months of 2013 (Figure 5) by using it
in advertisements for its air filters. Advertising
through social media, as opposed to web site banner
ads or those on the side of a bus, means that companies
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can rely on users—whether paid “water army” mem-
bers or regular people—to spread their message for
them to their online acquaintances. Our data show
that companies have shrewdly capitalized on the social
media debate about air pollution to gain popularity
and sell their products.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government has used social
media to give the impression that the air pollution
problem can be solved mostly or entirely through
technology and without sacrificing economic growth.
Government accounts are largely responsible for the
overall significance of terms such as weather, data, and
density (Figure 4). This is part of the Chinese state’s
efforts to make air pollution a scientific rather than a
political problem.
Breathing clean air is the privilege of those who
can afford to live, work, shop, and drive in buildings
and vehicles equipped with air filtration technology.
This is not merely a matter of comfort but one of life
and death. In a study carried out in Shanghai, Huang
et al. (2009) found that low visibility, which is highly
correlated with increased concentrations of PM2.5
and PM10, is significantly associated with elevated
death rates from cardiovascular disease on the time
scale of just one day. Guo et al. (2010) found that
outdoor air pollution has an hour-to-hour effect on
indoor air pollution levels, meaning that staying
inside (without air filtration) provides little respite
from pollutants, to say nothing of those commuting
by foot or bicycle. It is likely that it will be several
decades before clean air is abundant enough in Chi-
nese cities to be enjoyed by those who cannot afford
prime real estate or air filtration systems. In a Sina
Weibo post from 16 January 2014, Pan Shiyi stated
the obvious: “The outdoor air pollution problem
cannot be completely resolved for the time being. At
least we can maintain the indoor air quality to a
higher standard.” This prescription is only available
to the class of people who can afford expensive
indoor air filtration technology; Pan’s suggestion is
simply out of reach for most Chinese citizens.
Like PM2.5, power relations flow through spaces
and buildings occupied by different people (Biehler
and Simon 2011), in turn producing atmospheric sub-
jects (Whitehead 2009). Chinese city-dwellers are
sorted into the categories of those who can afford to
adapt to air pollution and those who cannot. The
Communist party recognized that this inequality could
threaten its rule. In a 2009 meeting with U.S. diplo-
mats to lodge a diplomatic complaint about the U.S.
Embassy posting air quality data on its Twitter
feed, Chinese officials expressed concern about the
“undesirable social consequences” that could arise
if the air pollution issue remained unresolved (U.S.
State Department 2009). Although the party-state
attempted for several years to end the debate by
grossly understating the extent of the air pollution, the
persistence of microblog users and the continued pres-
ence of the U.S. Embassy Twitter feed made this diffi-
cult. The government could shut down Sina Weibo
tomorrow,7 but their goal is to channel the public
expression of netizens, not eliminate it altogether.
Instead of banning it, the government seeks to use
social media as a tool for keeping track of public opin-
ion and communicating with the public (Hu 2010).
This does not mean that the government is embracing
a democratic medium or a new “online politics.” Hu
(2011) writes, “The online discussion of politics and
democratic politics are two separate things. And online
discussion of politics will not automatically eliminate
the difficulties in communication that we see in our
politics today.”
Chinese blogger Jing Zhao (aka Michael Anti), as
paraphrased by Eaves (2012), argues that the central
government uses social media as a “safety valve” to
“give people the sense that they can complain about
issues” without actually engaging in collective actions
that could threaten the central authority of the state.
Allowing open discussion of some issues might be as
important to the party-state as preventing discussion
of other issues. Nonetheless, to the extent that the
government fears that it cannot control a certain issue
because of its proliferation on microblogs, it might
take substantive action on the issue rather than con-
tinue to sideline it through propaganda and censor-
ship. We argue that this is the kind of calculation the
government made in the way it eventually responded
to the debate over air pollution. Rather than allowing
pressure from microblogs to threaten its legitimacy,
the party-state shrewdly occupied the social media
landscape (shoulder to shoulder with companies) to
advance its own environmental narrative.
Conclusions
The goal of this article is to assess the role of social
media as a liberation technology in the debate over
urban air pollution in China. Contextualized by earlier
literature on social media, political ecology, and envi-
ronmental governance in China, we conducted a case

study on the social media debate on air pollution in
Chinese cities from October 2012 to June 2013. By
identifying who is participating in the debate, what
they are posting about, and who the most influential
users are, we were able to trace the broad trends in the
air pollution debate as it took place on Sina Weibo.
We found that companies (seeking profit) and the gov-
ernment (seeking social stability) play a disproportion-
ate role in the social media debate. Although this case
study shows the clear potential of social media as liber-
ation technologies in China, their current limitations
make them unrepresentative of the population in gen-
eral and highly uneven along lines of gender, class,
and location.
It is unlikely that the new air quality standards will
result in significant mitigation in the short term as evi-
denced by recent headlines that more major cities all
over China have been hit by heavy smog (Xinhua
2013), with devastating impacts ranging from local
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school closures to disabled security cameras (Simpson
2013) and perhaps even harmful impacts on sperm
quality (Phillips 2013). According to Wu Dui, an offi-
cial in the Guangdong Meteorological agency, Chi-
nese city dwellers can expect to breathe heavily
polluted air for “another 20–30 years” (Watts 2012).
Air pollution mitigation will likely take a slow, incre-
mental path: Cleaner technologies will likely be gradu-
ally introduced, and dirty industries will eventually
migrate away from cities and perhaps to other coun-
tries as environmental regulations are more evenly
applied throughout China. In the meanwhile, those
who can adapt by consuming clean air as a luxury
good will be adding (perhaps negligibly but still sym-
bolically) to energy demand and thus emissions by
running their filtration systems. It is unlikely that Chi-
nese urban dwellers will ever again see anything like
the drastic, short-lived pollution mitigation strategies
that produced blue(ish) skies for the 2008 Beijing
Olympics.
Our research shows that microblogs are an espe-
cially uneven medium for the creation and contesta-
tion of environmental knowledge and narratives. As a
stand-in for a democratic political system, social media
disenfranchise anyone without Internet access, liter-
acy, or leisure time to browse microblogging web sites.
Poor and rural residents are almost entirely excluded
from the social media landscape. Pellow (2006, 227)
argues that digital technologies “facilitate the develop-
ment and dissemination of various discourses and cul-
tural imaginings, the most effective of which reinforce
capitalist and racist hierarchies within and across societies”
(italics added). Moreover, social media are subject to
falling under networked authoritarianism. Through
direct (action taken directly by state censors) and indi-
rect (action taken by companies under explicit or
implied pressure from the state) censorship, the Chi-
nese state has the ability to shape the social media
debate over air pollution or any other topic. In addi-
tion to repressive censorship, the government and
companies can also coopt social media to advance their
Social Media and Air Pollution in Chinese Cities 11
own agenda, whether that means defending the politi-
cal bottom line of social stability or the business bot-
tom line of selling products. Our analysis shows that
they have done this very successfully. Therefore, it is
not surprising that the social media discussion of
PM2.5 ultimately has not posed a significant threat to
party-state rule or placed greater decision-making
power in the hands of ordinary people.
Although Chinese microbloggers clearly helped
precipitate a policy response from the government, it
is unclear whether Chinese microblogs in their current
form—beholden to state censorship and largely
unavailable to the very citizens who suffer the worst
effects of pollution—are an effective or just medium
for public debate. &
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to Professor
Morton O’Kelly and Jens Blegvad of the Ohio State
Center for Urban and Regional Analysis for making
our data collection possible through their generous
logistical support, three anonymous reviewers for their
thoughtful comments in helping us prepare the final
version of this article, and our friends in the Peking
University College of Urban and Environmental Sci-
ences for their logistical support and invaluable
insights. The usual disclaimers apply.
Funding
Research for this article is a result of a collaborative
research project, “A GIScience Approach for Assess-
ing the Quality, Potential Applications, and Impact of
Volunteered Geographic Information,” funded by the
U.S. National Science Foundation (Award #104810).
Notes
1
Twitter has been banned in China since June 2009.
2
The “grass mud horse,” or cao ni ma, is a homophone
of a profane Chinese expression. The phrase became
popular in China in 2009 as a symbol of evading
censors.
3
Particulate matter 10 micrometers or less in
diameter.
4
Due to the nature of Sina Weibo’s search API, these
posts represent only a portion of all the air-pollution-
related posts from this time period. It is not possible
to know precisely what percentage of all the air pollu-
tion posts were collected by our crawler.
5
Xikeliwu, which can be translated as “fine particulate
matter” was adopted in 2013 as the official Chinese
name for PM2.5
6
In degree is a measurement of how many users repost
or comment on another user’s post. Weighted in
degree measures the number of reposts or comments
a particular user receives. (In degree counts users,
whereas weighted in degree counts reposts and com-
ments irrespective of the number of users making the
 12 Volume XX, Number X, Xxxxxxxxxxx 2015
reposts or comments.) Out degree is a measurement
of how much a user comments on or reposts other
users’ content.
7
Weibo and other microblog services were temporar-
ily disabled in July 2010 to implement “security”
measures (Pierson 2010). Comments and other fea-
tures are also sometimes temporarily disabled
(Magistad 2012).
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SAMUEL KAY carried out this research as a master’s student
in Geography at Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
43210. E-mail: kay.87@osu.edu. His research interests
include urban political ecology, health geography, Chinese
urbanization, and environmental justice.
BO ZHAO is a PhD student in Geography at the Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH 43210. E-mail: zhao.662@osu.
edu. His research interests include GIScience, social media,
crowdsourcing, and volunteered geographic information.
DANIEL SUI is a Distinguished Professor of Social &
Behavioral Sciences and Chair of the Department of Geogra-
phy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210. E-
mail: sui.10@osu.edu. His research interests include GIS-
cience, crowdsourcing, volunteered geographic information,
Chinese cities, and health geography.