[johnchristopher]

> Many academics, and most journalists and activists, claim that these so-called 50c party posts vociferously argue for the government’s side in political and policy debates. As we show, this is also true of most posts openly accused on social media of being 50c.

I am not a native speaker. I can't parse that sentence :/.

Why is this `also` true ? In addition to what ? Wouldn't it follow that posts arguing in favour of the government's side are tagged as `50c` since `50c` seems to be defined by being `pro government` ?

And then:

> [..] we show that the Chinese regime’s strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues.

If I ignore the `also` word in the first quote it all makes sense.

[dschuler]

"also true" is a phrase that really means "is the case as well" (as in the previous sentence).

The first sentence says that "journalists and activists" claim that if a post is written by a "50c party" poster, then it will strongly argue in favor of the Chinese government's side - instead of being more subtle, and maybe not _always_ arguing that China is 100% #1.

The second sentence says that "most posts open accused on social media of being 50c" will strongly argue in favor of the government's side, too.

I read this to mean that posts tagged as "50c" will argue for the Chinese government, and "50c party" posters will argue for the Chinese government, too, so the correspondence between the two is high.

My interpretation could be wrong, but I hope it helps!

[elefanten]

I read those two sentences to describe an existing misconception among BOTH (sentence 1) academics/journalists/activists AND (sentence 2) people posting on social media. The misconception is that the strategy of 50c party posters is to argue loudly from the perspective of the CCP.

The following sentence in the abstract helps put it in context: "Yet, almost no systematic empirical evidence exists for this claim, or, more importantly, for the Chinese regime's strategic objective in pursuing this activity. "

This third sentence presents the paper's challenge to the supposed misconception.

Therefore, the concluding quote you highlight makes perfect sense as the paper's thesis for what strategy drives 50c party posts.

Edit: I agree those sentence are a bit awkward. To help parse them, eliminate some of the connecting words:

1: "Academics/journalists/activists claim 50c posts argue for government's side."

2: "This is also true of posts accused on social media of being 50c" (this = argue for government's side)

3: "Yet, no evidence exists for this claim"

[kolpa]

I still don't get it. To me, they are saying that the general online public thinks "pro-CCP" and "50c" are the same thing, just as everyone says pro-HillaryClinton people are "Correct the Record" troops, and all pro-Trump people were Russian trolls, and all pro-Israel posters are AIPAC troops, and all shitposters are 4channers

[ucaetano]

Essentially it translates that:

* Accounts that publicly disclose as being related to group A

And

* Accounts that don't publicly mention any relationship with group A, but are frequently accused as being part of group A

Show similar behavior (always supporting the government's side).

[yorwba]

> Why is this `also` true ? In addition to what ?

It is true in addition to being claimed.

[johnchristopher]

Thanks everyone :).