微博之功：將被掩藏的真相透明化

如果要想完整地了解中國的7•23甬溫鐵路動車追尾事件，恐怕最全面的的見證者不是平面媒體，而是在中國方興未艾的微博。我相信，正是微博特殊的信息發散功能，使一切變得更透明化，也使中國政府的社會管理方式極其尷尬地顯現出它的不透明性。

脫胎於Twitter的微博早被中國網友創造性地將其從社交工具轉變成媒體平台。號稱“世界上最勤奮”的中國網友利用其特點，充分發揮了同類聚合的功能，無論是功能的多樣性還是對信息的容納量，早已經超過了它的模仿對象Twitter。7•23事件的整個過程，正在被微博通過各種信息碎片慢慢連綴成一幅巨大的拼圖。

微博在還原真實的死亡人數方面起了很大的作用。首先，微博讓受難者的親屬們儘快了解到他們親人的消息。遇難者項余岸、施李虹的弟弟項余遇，就是通過微博尋人，得知準確消息並找到了倖存的侄女項煒伊。其次，一些死者家屬在微博上發表的信息與網友提供的一些細節，讓世界知道死亡39人並非準確的數字。比如一位失去了孩子的母親郭瑤在騰訊微博上質問鐵道部：為什麼死亡名單上沒有她孩子的名字？到底還有多少人的名字沒有登上去？

在揭露鐵道部門迅速掩埋車頭這件事上，微博同樣發揮了很大的作用。 7•23甬溫鐵路動車追尾事件發生後，車體殘骸在不到四天內被切割、拆解、運出現場，其中D301次動車的損毀車頭還經歷了被埋入坑中再挖出來的“粗暴對待”。事故現場清理之迅速，對車廂、車頭等處理之草率，遭到公眾詰問。不少被網友拍到的現場照片及強大的詰問聲浪首先來自微博，最後迫使有關部門又重新挖出。

微博與傳媒形成了極緊密的互動關係。雖然我知道近兩年以來，中國許多突發事件最早都是通過微博發布，許多記者也都在微博上日夜蹲守“淘金”，尋找各種有價值的新聞線索並跟蹤採訪，然後並以最快的速度製作成新聞。但這次7•23事件中，微博與傳統媒體互動之迅速，還是讓人感到微博的威力。一些微博發燒友在動車上發的信息成了動車之慟最早的信息源，騰訊的微採訪，則以及時快捷的形式發布了在傳統媒體上不便刊登、或者不能刊登的原汁原味的採訪，裡面有受害者家屬的真實遭遇，現場記者對現場事故的疑點，還有專業人士如律師對受難者家屬提供的專業意見。這些互動過程，不僅能幫助受難者尋求到社會幫助，還有利於公民權利意識的覺醒。

微博還讓世界看到了這一事件中許多非常生動但傳統媒體包括門戶網站註定會遺失的細節，比如在總理溫家寶到場的那場記者招待會上發生的一件“最讓國人蒙羞的諷刺”事件：“今天，忙碌的溫總理終於晝夜兼程趕到了7.23動車事故現場，……日本媒體將攝像機架在最前面，後面中國媒體要他 把機子架低點，日本記者不幹，理直氣壯地說：‘你們國內拍了有用嗎？又播不了！’此話猶如晴天霹靂！中國媒體頓時啞然！” 一向受人詬病的央視，其新聞頻道《24小時》欄目現任製片人王青雷在新聞播報前表達了一番對國家現狀的悲憤，以及不要把車頭這麼快埋掉的話而被停職，這條消息也是在微博上由媒體人最先發布出來。這些，都讓世人看到中國媒體管制的醜惡一面。

在這次動車追尾事故中痛失5位親人、一直作為受難者家屬代表出現的楊峰與有關官員會面後，態度發生180度大轉變。他受到將失去第6位親人的威脅被迫沉默的消息，也是在微博上發表出來，被江蘇網友池墨寫成短文“是誰在威脅楊峰？”發表於BBC中文網7月28日的“大家談中國”欄目里，讓讀者通過楊峰的遭遇感知了中國政府行為黑社會化的一面。

但作為一種新媒體，微博有其長處與短處。微博的“長板”是：無論是從消息的傳播速度還是其組織動員方面，其作用和影響都是革新性的。由於參與門檻低，沒有“看守”，任何人都可以將身邊的突發事件通過微博傳播。因此，微博甚至成為外媒眼中“一個觀察中國正在發生什麼的實時檢測系統”。而且微博因其傳播的放大效應，可促使事件迅速發酵，這是傳統媒體及前微博時代的網絡媒體所欠缺的。

微博的“短板”是：作為新聞的首發之地，其信息來源的可靠性有待檢驗。加之受限於字數，無法深入挖掘、細緻鋪陳，因而始終只能作為前兩類媒體的補充與線索提供者。好在中國傳媒界人士有不少聚集在微博上，他們使用微博的心得及經驗交流，都能夠促使中國社會的信息透明化。

通過對7.23事件中微博的信息發散功能近距離觀察，我感到除了網絡管制之外，還有一個問題是中國未來信息透明化的一個障礙，那就是中國社會成員對網絡資源佔有不均所造成的“知性裂溝”，這使微博介入現實的作用不能充分發揮。比如網民在地域上多集中在東部發達地區；享有更多發言權的群體上多集中在佔有更多政治、文化、經濟資源的群體等等。這次事故當中，能夠使用微博的遇難者家屬無論在獲得信息及社會幫助方面都明顯具有優勢。

The Power of Weibo: Bringing Transparency to Concealed Truth
Written on July 29, 2011
(Translated by krizcpec)

Those who want to have full understanding of the Wenzhou train collision that happened on July 23, 2011 may find the most comprehensive source of information to be microblogging (Weibo), instead of print media. I believe it is the unique function of information dissemination that made everything more transparent, and thereby revealing, to the extreme embarrassment of the Chinese government, the opacity of the country’s social management.

Evolved from Twitter, Weibo has long been turned from a social tool into a media platform. Reputed to be the most diligent of their kind, Chinese netizens make use of Weibo’s special features, bringing fully into play its function of aggregation of like-minded people, giving Weibo its transcendence over Twitter, both in terms of functional diversity and information capacity. The whole story of that train collision was gradually pieced together with bits and pieces of information circulated across Weibo.
Weibo played an important role in restoring the true death tolls. First, it enabled relatives of the victims to learn quickly about their loved ones. Xiang Yuyu, whose elder brother and sister-in-law were among the dead, managed to locate his niece, Xiang Weiyi, alive by accurate information he gathered via Weibo. Second, from the details shared on Weibo, the world learned that the official death toll at thirty-nine was not accurate. Guo Yao, a mother whose child was killed in the crash, questioned the Ministry of Railways why did her child’s name not appear in the list of victims, and exactly, how many others were not included in that list?

Weibo played an equally important role in revealing the Ministry of Railways’ swift burial of the locomotive. After the collision, the wreckage was cut, dismantled, and moved from the scene in less than four days; the damaged locomotive of D301 was even subjected to rough treatment of being buried first and dug up later. The speedy clearing of the scene of the accident; the sloppy handling of the cars and the locomotive; all these invited questions and criticism from the public. Photos taken at the scene, and the powerful waves of questions emerged first at Weibo, forced the related department to dig up the buried locomotive.

Weibo has been in close interaction with the mass media. I am aware that in the last two years, information on many of China’s emergencies was published first in Weibo. Many journalists would stay nights and days on Weibo to find all sorts of useful leads, follow them, conduct interviews, and then publish the stories as fast as they could. But in this incident, the rapid interaction between Weibo and traditional media still make one feel the power of this form of social media. Information distributed by heavy users of Weibo became the earliest information source for the special feature on this tragedy; with micro-interviews, stories that would be difficult or impossible to publish in traditional media were presented in their entirety to the world in a swift and timely manner: from what relatives of the victims had gone through, to skepticism from journalists on scene and advice from professionals such as lawyers. These interactive processes didn’t just help victims in seeking social assistance, they were also conducive to raising civil rights awareness.

Besides, Weibo has shown the world train-crash-related details that were lively but would definitely not make their way to appear in traditional media. For instance, when premier Wen Jiabao arrived at a press conference, an incident that “made the Chinese people feel most ashamed” occurred: Japanese media practitioners placed their cameras in the front and foremost position, when urged by their Chinese counterpart to lower their cameras, they refused, “What use would that be of? [Your footage] won’t be aired anyway.” A remark that left the Chinese media practitioners lost for words. It was also first published on Weibo the story that Wang Qinglei, current producer of China Central Television news channel “24 hours”, has been suspended over her critical and frustrated remarks about the current situation of the country and the comment that the locomotive was buried too quickly. All this help the world see the ugly side of media control in China.

Yang Feng, a man whose five relatives were killed in the crash, has been acting as the representative of the families of the victims until he completely changed his attitude after a meeting with officials. It was revealed on Weibo that Yang had been forced to keep quiet by the threat that he would lose his sixth relative. Subsequently, an essay entitled “Who is threatening Yang Feng? (是誰在威脅楊峰？)” was published in the BBC Chinese column of Let’s talk about China (大家談中國) on July 28, bringing the readers to the understanding of the illicit nature of the Chinese government.

As a form of new media, Weibo has its strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of Weibo are: in terms of the speed in dissemination of information and the ability to organize and mobilize people, Weibo has a revolutionary role and impact; because of its low threshold for people to join in and the absence of watchers, anyone can publicize breaking stories that happen around them. These are why foreign media would see Weibo as “a real-time polling system to find out what’s going on in China”. Besides, the amplification effect of Weibo, which traditional media and pre-microblogging online media are lacking, can help generate attention to the incident rapidly.
However, Weibo has the following weaknesses: being the first place where news stories are published, the reliability of their sources of information will need to be examined; the character limit of Weibo makes it impossible to go into details, thus it can only be a source of additional information and leads for traditional and pre-microblogging Internet media. Fortunately, many Chinese media professionals are on Weibo, their tips in using Weibo and experience sharing are able to promote information transparency in Chinese society.

Through up close observation of the information dissemination function of Weibo, I feel that apart from the control of the Internet, there is another problem that would become a barrier for China’s information transparency in future—the “intellectual fissure” resulted from the unequal share of network resource among members of Chinese society. This fissure would hinder the full play of Weibo’s social intervention capacity. For example netizens are mostly concentrated in the eastern part of China; groups that have bigger say are mostly those possess, among other things, more political, cultural, and economic resources. In this incident, those families of the victims who could use Weibo clearly enjoyed an advantage in terms of obtaining information and seeking social assistance.

He Qinglian is a Chinese author and economist, most prominently known for her critical view of Chinese society and media controls in China. Her key publications are: The Pitfalls of Modernization and The Fog of Censorship: Media Control in China
(via Wikipedia)

http://hqlenglish.blogspot.com/2011/08/power-of-weibo-bringing-transparency-to.html