中國社交媒體 打破沉默也帶來雜音

Last Thursday morning I was on the bus to work in the central business district of Beijing, browsing social media and loathing myself for obsessing over posts about fashion, when I saw a picture of black and purple smoke rising over thousands of completely burnt-out cars. News travels fast in China these days. The photo was reposted by a friend of mine, who is from Tianjin. It looked like a war zone.

上週四早晨，我坐在公交車上，要到北京中央商務區(CBD)去上班。我一邊瀏覽着社交媒體，一邊爲自己沉迷於時尚類帖子而自我唾棄，這時我看到了一張照片：在數千輛完全被燒燬的汽車上空，冒着黑色和紫色的濃煙。如今，新聞在中國傳播得很快。這張照片是天津的一個朋友轉發的。那場景看起來像戰場。

The last time I saw something this terrifying was seven years ago. Back then I was working as a journalist for the Chinese state media, and on the afternoon of May 12 a friend called to tell me there had been a major earthquake near his home town in Sichuan province. He hung up in a rush, saying he needed to check if his parents were safe.

上一次我見到同等級別的可怕場景還是在7年前。當時我是中國官方媒體的一名記者。那年5月12日下午，一位朋友打電話給我，說他在四川省的老家附近發生了大地震。他匆忙掛斷電話，說要打回去看看自己的父母是否平安。

In 2008 it was unusual for breaking news to arrive via your phone. Facebook and Twitter were already blocked to most Chinese internet users. Weibo, which has been called the Chinese version of Twitter, did not yet exist. Neither did WeChat — now China’s most widely used social media platform and the one on which I heard about last week’s tragedy in Tianjin. It would not be launched for more than two years.

2008年時，通過手機收到突發新聞還不常見。大多數中國網民已經無法使用Facebook和Twitter。被稱爲中國版Twitter的微博(Weibo)還未誕生，也沒有微信(WeChat)——兩年多後微信才問世，如今已是中國使用最廣的社交媒體平臺。也正是通過微信，我得知了上週發生在天津的慘劇。

A week after my friend’s distraught call, I went to Sichuan with a group of fellow reporters to report on the aftermath of the earthquake. The closer I got to the reality of the disaster, the more distant I was from information about it: we were on the move constantly with no radio and no newspapers; my mobile phone was disconnected quite often due to bad reception.

接到朋友焦慮不安的電話一週後，我和一羣記者同行趕赴四川，報道震後災情。我越接近災難現場，就離這場災難的信息越遠：我們一路奔波，聽不到廣播，也沒有報紙；由於信號不好，我的手機經常連不上網絡。

I had the chance to talk to survivors, shed tears with them, and we faced the fear of aftershocks, flood and contamination together. We were all scared. But at least we knew what was happening — unlike many farther away, who relied on what second-hand information they could obtain.

我抓住機會與倖存者交談，跟他們一起流淚，我們共同面對餘震、洪水及污染所帶來的恐懼。我們都很害怕，但至少我們知道這裏發生了什麼——不像外面的人，只能依賴他們能夠得到的一些二手信息。

No one had to rely on such reports last week. Still on the bus in Beijing, I sent an instant message to my friend. “A disaster,” she replied, “like the end of the world. Fortunately my parents were living far enough away, so they are OK.”

上週的爆炸發生後，人們不必再依賴此類報道。還在北京公交車上時，我給朋友發了一條信息。“一場災難”，她回覆說，“像世界末日。幸虧我父母住得足夠遠，所以他們沒事。”

You did not have to know someone in the stricken city to know what was going on. My smartphone buzzed with all sorts of information: pictures of the blast site, apparently taken by a drone; video footage of the shock wave; logs written by reporters on the scene.

你不必認識受災城市的人就可以獲悉那裏發生了什麼。我的智能手機不停地收到各種信息：爆炸現場的照片（顯然是由無人機拍攝）；爆炸衝擊波的視頻；現場記者所寫的日誌。

A photographer with the nickname X-ceanido uploaded images to WeChat after spending Thursday in the ruins. Within 24 hours these cruelly graphic pictures, accompanied by a diary-style report, had been viewed 100,000 times and attracted more than 2,000 comments. They were deleted, probably by internet censors, only to pop up again every time they were taken down.

一位網名爲X-ceanido的攝影師上週四在廢墟中忙碌了一天，隨後他將所拍照片上傳到微信。24小時內，這些慘烈的圖片伴隨着一篇日記風格的報道已經被閱讀了10萬次，吸引了2000多條評論。這些照片被刪除了（很可能是互聯網審查者所爲），但每次它們被撤下後都會很快再次出現。

At home that evening I tuned my television to a Tianjin station and steeled myself for more horrifying footage. What I saw shocked me for a different reason: the channel was broadcasting a Korean television drama. There was nothing about the explosions. Eventually the schlocky romance was turned off and some newsreaders came on, reading carefully written statements from a teleprompter. The city authorities held press conferences, each one as brief as possible — although some of them ended awkwardly, with critical questions left unanswered, prompting more criticism online.

那天晚上回家後，我打開電視，調到天津一電視臺，並做好了心理準備，以爲自己會看到更多恐怖鏡頭。我確實看到了令自己震驚的一幕，但不是因爲恐怖的畫面，而是因爲該臺居然在播放韓國電視劇。沒有關於爆炸的報道。最終，蹩腳的電視劇被停掉，新聞播報員出來了，小心翼翼地宣讀着臺詞提示器上的書面聲明。天津市政府舉行了多場新聞發佈會，每一場都儘可能地簡短——有些發佈會尷尬收場，而關鍵問題沒有得到回答，在網絡上引發了更多批評之聲。

While information is now easier to come by, hard facts are not. The fragmented sources on social media are bewildering; some offer solid reporting, but others can be subjective and inaccurate. It is difficult to tell which are which. Advanced technology has provided an escape from the censorship. But we are at risk of replacing silence with indecipherable noise. It is sometimes difficult to believe anything unless you see it with your own eyes or hear it from someone you trust.

雖然如今人們可以更容易地獲取信息，但得知真相併不容易。社交媒體上分散的信息來源讓人眼花繚亂；有些提供紮實可靠的報道，還有些可能是出於主觀想法的，或者是不準確的。很難分辨這些信息的真假。先進的技術提供了逃避審查的方法。但我們面臨一種危險：沉默被打破時，取而代之的是各種難以分辨的嘈雜聲。有時候很難相信任何信息，除非親眼見到或者從信任的人那裏聽到。

And silence has a way of coming back. Three days after the explosions, some popular posts seemed to have been deleted. A Weibo message recording the explosion, which had been posted by a nearby resident on the evening it happened, had somehow disappeared into thin air. The authorities have arrested some people who posted online, accusing them of “scamming”. Hundreds of social media accounts have been shut down on the grounds that they had been used for “spreading rumour”.

而且，沉默會以自己的方式迴歸。爆炸發生三天後，一些人氣很旺的帖子似乎已被刪除。一條爆炸現場附近居民當晚所發的、記錄爆炸過程的微博已經消失得無影無蹤。當局逮捕了一些在網上發帖的網民，指控他們“欺詐”。數百個社交媒體賬戶被封殺，理由是它們被用於“散佈謠言”。

On Monday night, nearly five days after the blasts, official television was reporting that least 114 people had died and 70 were missing. Whether any local officials were expected to be held responsible, it did not say. As to why dangerous chemicals were being stored only hundreds of metres from residential buildings where tens of thousands of people live, there was no definitive official answer.

截至週一晚，在爆炸發生近五天後，官方電視臺報道，至少有114人死亡，70人失蹤。報道中未提及是否有任何當地官員將對此次事故負責。至於爲什麼危險化學品被存儲在距離有數萬人口的居民點只有幾百米的地方，還沒有明確權威的官方答覆。