How We Express Ourselves Freely: Censorship, Self-censorship, and Anti-censorship on a Chinese Social Media

Censorship, anti-censorship, and self-censorship in an authoritarian regime have been extensively studies, yet the relationship between these intertwined factors is not well understood. In this paper, we report results of a large-scale survey study ( $$N=526$$ ) with Sina Weibo users toward bridging research gap. Through descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression uncover how are being censored, why they conduct on different topics scenarios (i.e., post, repost, comment), their various anti-censorship strategies. We further identify metrics censorship self-censorship, find influence factors, construct mediation model to measure relationship. Based findings, discuss implications for democratic social media design future research.