Journal of Conflict Transformation & Security
Defeat the Tweet? Social Media, Grassroots Dissent, and Authoritarian Co-optation
Native Chinese Social Media Structures
235
have an interest in properly maintaining. The problem with this temptation is that it is once again confusing results with process. Social media is a process, a social mobilization facilitator. As such, most important in determining an area’s suitability to create civil unrest and disobedience is not to question what people actually protest in the present day, but rather ascertaining whether the necessary structures are in place to facilitate any protests at all. It is clear from the evidence documented above that China not only has the structures in place but the structures are in fact home-grown to the potential protesters who would use them. This is important because while most of the social media structures in China today are predominantly used for business and economic properties, the only thing required to make those same structures useful instead for civil disobedience is a slight negative shift in popular satisfaction and the people’s general sense of well-being. Most analyses focus either on the absence of Western technology or the total control of the Chinese state over technology. These arguments are overplayed. The antithesis matrix exposes that the mere presence of social media technology allows such structures to potentially become facilitators of dissent, though they are not the initial spark to ignite anger or a guarantee for the emergence of a Chinese democracy. Certain aspects of this potentiality are seen in the work of Larry Diamond, where he considered so-called liberation technology in China: