Replication and extension of "How Chinese Officials Use the Internet to Construct their Public Image" by Jennifer Pan (2017)
This is the final project for our Gov 1006 class. The task is to reproduce an academic paper, leveraging the data and the code that was published with it. I have decided to focus on: "How Chinese Officials Use the Internet to Construct their Public Image" by Jennifer Pany, published in June 15, 2017.
Pan (2017) shows that the emphasis on Chinese local government websites on either the competence or benevolence of county executives depends on where they are in the political tenure cycle. I was largely able to replicate these results. My extension confirms that this is the most likely explanation of the observed effect by comparing the statistical explanatory power of alternative models (e.g. cultural differences among regions, gender differences, etc.) through the leave one out method. In addition, I validate the geographical randomness of the sample through repeated simulated sampling and the construction of confidence intervals.