Social media and the Qinghai earthquake

One thing has become clear to me after monitoring microblogging services like Twitter in China this morning for news of the Qinghai earthquake: it’s a very long way to Yushu, even from Xining, the regional capital of Qinghai (800 kilometers or 500 miles, to be precise).

Another is that it’s hard to know who anyone is – or who is hiring them to ‘comment’ or ‘report’ – unless you have already made reciprocated contact with them or know them personally.

“Yu Miao”, a “volunteer” tweeting from Xi’an airport on various microblogging platforms,  tells us:

+8613901894753: #qhdz 半夜的西宁机場异常忙碌 看到不斷有山東.重慶等省消防和救援隊集結.一幅緊張的戰備狀態.此去玉树820公里，预计车程12小时。－ 于淼在西宁至玉树途中报道

Xining airport is thronging with people in the middle of the night. I saw a steady stream of rescue workers and firefighters from Shandong, Chongqing and other provinces grouping together, with the anxious air of going into battle. It is still 820 kilometres (500 miles) to Yushu from here. I am guessing it will take them 12 hours.

According to Yu Miao, passenger flights into Xining are hard to find, and the airport is swarming with firefighters, armed police and PLA soldiers getting ready to start digging people out from under collapsed buildings.

Amid the storm of tweets about the earthquake, much of which is simply retweets of other people’s tweets about news reports or photographs, it is possible to get some information.

The Shanghai-based correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, Malcolm Moore, has sent out updates on Twitter as he approaches (with apparent glacial slowness, given the huge distances involved), the epicenter of the quake.

At one point on his trip, Malcolm was told that foreign journalist “weren’t allowed” to the disaster area because of their own safety. This struck me as a possible knee-jerk response, and one which I heard as early as 1988 from a bouncer who didn’t want to let me into a local dance hall. When in doubt, keep the foreigner out, saving trouble that might come back at you…

His later update seemed to bear this out: “Lots of monks, lots of soldiers, lots of police. We’ve been able to move around freely,” he wrote.

As he got higher and higher into the Himalayan plateau, official media began putting out regulations regarding foreign journalists.

…青海省从15日起启动《青海省外事办公室破坏性地震涉外应急预案》，以做好抗震救灾期间境外记者采访服务管理工作，保障抗震救灾工作有序进行。

…境外记者采访时应随身携带有效证件，并向地方外办和公安执法人员等出示。各相关部门将会主动提供有关信息，协调境外记者抗震救灾采访工作。

“Emergency response and contingency planning in the wake of a destructive earthquake regarding foreigners from the Qinghai provincial foreign affairs office, April 15.”

“Overseas journalists should carry with them their documentation at all times, ready for presentation to law enforcement officials or officials of the local foreign affairs office.”

“The relevant departments will release relevant information without being asked, in order to coordinate the work of overseas reporters covering the earthquake disaster relief work.”

Meanwhile, Beijing-based Chinese journalist Geekinmedia has been keeping an eye on the utterances of local propaganda chiefs:

昨天夜里青海省委宣传部又开会了，吉狄马的调子有变化，看来打算“以我为主”引导舆论.

“Provincial propaganda department chief for the Qinghai provincial Communist Party Jidi Majia held a meeting in the small hours. He seems to have changed his tune. Looks like he plans to take a top-down approach to directing news coverage.”

In the news reports she links to first, Jidi Majia points to the beneficial effects of prompt and accurate reporting of the rescue effort following the Sichuan earthquake, calling on official Chinese media to shoulder the responsibility of reporting this earthquake.

He says that state-run Qinghai Television will do its best, although it lacks the technological and human resources necessary to maintain full live coverage of the disaster.

He calls on journalists, especially those from within the province, Qinghai TV and the Qinghai Daily newspaper, to act immediately to produce all-round coverage from a number of angles to satisfy the need for live television coverage, including rolling messaging on the screens and interviews with experts and to produce timely and relevant news reporting.

He then goes on to emphasize political considerations and responsibility in reporting the quake:

根据四川“512”特大地震宣传报道的经验，新闻舆论宣传在抗震救灾工作中具有不可替代的作用。

We should learn from our experience of publicizing the May 12 Sichuan earthquake. Media and public opinion form an irreplaceable role at the heart of the rescue and relief operations.

Of course, learning from Sichuan is exactly what Qinghai may be all about. Just ask Ai Weiwei, blogger, artist and activist who recently publicized a list of schoolchildren killed after the May 12, 2008 earthquake in Sichuan (since removed in China but you can see it in Chinese here at Google Docs).

Ai Tweeted earlier today:

汶川地震学校坍塌，掩盖真相逃避责任。玉树地震学校再次坍塌，仍然会不了了之。政府没有良心，穷人没有尊严。

In the [Sichuan] earthquake, the schools collapsed, and they covered up the truth and escaped responsibility. Now, in the Yushu earthquake, the schools are collapsing again, and they probably won’t deal with that either. The government has no conscience and poor people have no dignity.

According to the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch’s Asia advocacy director, Sophie Richardson:

Some of those best poised to help those parents will not be available to help anyone in Qinghai who has similarly suffered. Two Chinese activists, Huang Qi and Tan Zuoren, who are well-known for their efforts to investigate allegations of corruption in school construction in Sichuan and compile a list of the children killed in the Sichuan quake, won’t be able to pester the government with similar questions about Qinghai. They can’t, because instead of being treated as the civic heroes they were, they’re serving sentences for “revealing state secrets” and “subversion” for criticizing the authorities.

You can read RFA’s latest quake coverage in English here, and a list of stories related to earthquakes and the media here.

More than a year after initiating his “citizens’ investigation” into the reasons behind the collapse of schools in the May 2008 Sichuan quake, Ai says he has drawn a blank with all the relevant government departments.

And, according to netizens, there are plenty of government buildings left standing today in Yushu (see phot, above right):

According to a tweet making the rounds in the Chinese-language social media, government buildings appear to be still standing.

@agaguk 青海玉樹州結古鎮不是沒有建筑質量好的建筑，掛國徽的真結實，連外立面的玻璃都沒掉！ #qhdz #青海|玉樹|地震 http://moby.to/1sbhtt #qhdz about 6 hours ago via Echofon Retweeted by 3 people

In Jiegu township, Yushu prefecture, Qinghai, it seems that if a building carries the national emblem, it is pretty robust. There aren’t even any cracks on the walls!