Evaluation of Social Media Sources

Social Media Thoughts on the Chinese National Natural Science Award Scandal

In this post, I analyze reactions on social media to China's award for National Natural Science in the year 2014. Controversy has surrounded this issue because many think the award-winning project was not impressive enough given the history of the award, and because some are accusing the creator Zhang Yaoxue of plagiarism.

geralt, "Email Communcation Social Media" January 2015 via pixabay.com.
CC0 Public Domain License.

My first source of a social media reaction to the controversy in China is from John Robertson on a Quora.com question and response page. The question was basically asking for opinions on the controversy as to how people view the award-winning work, and John Robertson provided a well structured, civil answer to the question that actually praised the work despite the multitude of opinions against it.

John Robertson, on his Quora account, states that he holds an Engineering degree from Cambridge University. While he does not currently affiliate with any organization, he has an impressive history on the Quora site for answering 575 questions, which all seem to be of the same high quality as his answer in this article. Overall, he seems to be a credible source at least to the point where his opinion is worth considering.

As stated on his profile page on Quora, John Robertson does not reside in China, but was born in Scotland and now lives in Australia. He does not seem to be affected by this conflict directly but he nonetheless provides a unique prospective on the matter.  

In his network on Quora, John Robertson has a few engineers from various colleges and universities following him, in addition to a couple software designers. Otherwise, no noteworthy individuals are in his network.

While John Robertson primarily just spoke of common knowledge relating to the controversy such as the project itself, which is well corroborated in other sources, the content of Robertson's answer is focused on his unique perspective of the issue. Out of all the sources I read, Robertson is the only one to defend Yaoxue and his Meta OS project, saying that it won the National Natural Science Award in China because it is an operating system created in China, and thus has high value because China has been wanting to move away from Western-designed operating systems. I believe that the value of Robertson as a source rests in his unique opinion that portrayed the controversy in a completely different light.

This is the only post John Robertson seems to have created on this issue, so he does not contextualize his response amongst other posts on this controversy.

John Robertson's account has existed for well over a year, as he's answered hundreds of questions on the site and has had over 100,000 views across all his answers. His account undoubtedly is credible.

Overall, I believe John Robertson is a reliable source, because he has an established account history and evident knowledge in the field, and primarily is just offering a logical opinion on the matter that lends the controversy two sides, which I had not encountered before.

 

My second source comes from author Amy Li's post on the South China Morning Post "Stop Meddling in Science Awards, Chinese Computer Federation Tells Government." The article details many computer scientists, both in China and across the world, and how they don't believe Yaoxue's operating system deserved the award. The article also brought forward accounts from a retired computer scientist at Peking University stating that there was evidence in the past that this national award was pre-decided and the did not have fair evaluation of competitors.

Amy Li, the author, has been associated with the South China Morning Post for three years as well as the international  news source known as Reuters in her past, and also taught at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, China. 

Amy Li works at the SCMP in Hong Kong currently, which lends her credibility in reporting on the controversy as she lives in China and works for a news post specifically reporting on Chinese current events.

I could not find any networks that Amy Li has other than the staff at the SCMP. This may also be due to the fact that China blocks most western social media sites.

The information presented in Amy Li's article is corroborated across many other news sources as she stated that there is general distrust in the government's role in awarding science awards, and having a lack of transparency in the evaluation process. However, the one bit of information in her article that I did not find in other sources was that a retired computer science professor at Peking University stated that in his time in a review board for a state science award in 2003, he discovered the decision for the award was already pre-decided.

While Amy Li did not have many posts on this specific controversy, her numerous articles on Chinese current events reinforces her credibility in posting about this controversy for the SCMP.

Amy Li has been a journalist for over 11 years, and been with the SCMP for three years.

I believe that Amy Li is an incredibly reliable source on the controversy and that her statements from academic officials across China are also credible and should be considered as fact.