Discourse behind the Forbidden Realm: Internet surveillance and its implications on China’s blogosphere

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Abstract

This paper investigates the implications of regulation in China’s blogosphere and the extent to which it impacts bloggers from both a social and a cultural context. There is a growing culture of revelation in China’s blogosphere which is replete with the character of celebrity gossip, personal experience, and self-disclosure. Abundant diary-style blogs and bloggers’ limited interest in politics demonstrate a new cultural phenomenon that obscures the impact of Internet censorship on blogging. However, drawing from theoretical perspectives of Internet censorship, surveillance, and privacy to examine the current trends in China’s blogosphere, this paper illustrates that cyberspace creates the structure of the surveillance environment by implementing technological architectures that mine information about human behavior and preferences. As a result, China’s blogosphere has relatively little value as a medium for organized free speech. A blog is not necessarily a new democratizing vehicle; moreover, concentrated power and sustained inequality in the blogosphere do not overcome governmental regulations.

Introduction

The global proliferation of the Internet and the widespread adoption of information technology have caused a profound transformation in communication throughout the world. Just as phones, faxes, and text messages extend face-to-face conversation, emails, Internet forums, bulletin boards, and chat rooms facilitate communication in virtual communities. While the blog, a newer Internet genre, has quickly emerged as a hybrid diary site with unique proportions of links, commentary, personal thoughts, and essays; the decentralized interactive communication model is shaping our society – culturally, politically, and socioeconomically.

The adoption of this new form of communication tool in a traditionally closed society is of increasing interest in the context of the burgeoning growth of blogging, which threatens the Chinese government’s control over democratic discourse, free speech, and civil rights. China has a long record of Internet censorship, stemming from its fear of the political consequences that could undermine a dictatorial regime (Deibert, 2002, Hong, 2001, Tan, 1999, Taubman, 2002). The impact of the Chinese government’s control over Internet users is a topic that has produced binary opposition for decades. Some (Hill and Hughes, 1998, Taubman, 2002, Lacharite, 2002) hold that advanced technology and the free flow of information make the Internet uncontrollable, while others (Abbott, 2001, Kalathil and Boas, 2003, Shie, 2004) contend that the diminished power of government surveillance and monitoring is misplaced and that Internet censorship could continue to be one of the most pervasive barriers to regime change.

Nevertheless, even the halt of these decade-long debates cannot explain rapid changes in cyberspace. Although blogging, with its interactive multi-level communication, community-building, and genuine conversations (Burnstein, 2005) is not by all means tackling overtly sensitive topics; it is a new space for public opinion to coalesce. Therefore, to control information deemed “harmful” to the Chinese government, China’s Ministry for the Information Industry (MII) announced on March 20, 2005 that all China-based websites and blogs had to be registered, providing the full identity of the site owner. Chinese authority formally published its first Blog Service Self-Discipline Convention through Internet Society of China (ISC) on August 22, 2007 “encouraging” blog service providers to adopt real-name registration for the users and to set up effective management mechanisms to monitor or delete “illegal” or “inappropriate” information.

The Chinese authorities have brought blogs under state control; however, how does China fully control blogs as a mode of online communication and the public sphere? What are the implications of China’s current Internet regulation in its blogosphere? Is the Chinese government’s battle over the proliferation of blogs winnable? More specifically, to what extent does China’s Internet censorship impact bloggers? Definitive answers to these questions remain unknown.

The goal of this paper is to investigate these questions by addressing the issues from a social and cultural context. This paper will address the transforming phenomenon of blogging in China’s online society and the related research. Latest survey data for two consecutive years of blogs in China obtained from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) will be synthesized to examine the current trends in the blogosphere. Drawing from theoretical perspectives of Internet censorship, surveillance, and privacy will further illustrate the scope of the issues and their investigation.

Section snippets

The surge of blogs in China

China officially came online in 1993 (Kalathil and Boas, 2003). A longitudinal study conducted by CNNIC showed that, with 253 million people online, China’s booming Internet population has surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest at the end of June, 2008; a 56% increase over the same time last year (CNNIC, 2008a, CNNIC, 2008b). In comparison, Nielsen Media Research estimates that there were over 1463 million Internet users in the world, of whom 223.1 million were in the United

The myth of blogging: public sphere or personal diary

There is a growing body of research on blogs in Western countries due to this widespread popularity. Herring et al. (2004) examined a random sample of blogs to describe many aspects of blogs, such as author characteristics, the purpose of blogs, and its structural elements and chronological features. They found that the majority of blogs in their sample (70%) were journals, particularly those produced by adolescent bloggers. Other research on blogs includes the use of blogging in political

The multi-faceted nature of China’s blogosphere

Blogging in China reached its milestone in 2005. The first-time large scaled survey of China’s Bloggers was completed in the following year. The data (Fig. 2, Fig. 3), taken from China’s Blogger Survey (CNNIC, 2007), demonstrates that 83.5% of Chinese Bloggers wrote just to document personal feelings and express personal views (60.2%), whereas over half of blog audiences (52.4%) read blogs just to pass the time. In comparison, the latest survey (CNNIC, 2008a, CNNIC, 2008b) found that still the

The conflict between market-oriented openness and state-constrained regulations

China embraced an economic and industrial reform when Deng Xiaoping opened up its market in 1978, making it one of the fastest growing economies in the world. ICT has long been seen as a driving force in promoting the country’s overall economic growth and social progress and, thus, shaping Chinese policies particularly toward “informatization” since the early 1980s. China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) further signifies that the long struggle to open up the economy has to a

The dilemma of Internet censorship

Research on the impact of China’s Internet censorship can be divided into two approaches. The first line of approach emphasizes the vulnerability and inefficacy of Internet regulation. Researchers claim that the Internet can serve as conduit to greater transparency (Harwit and Clark, 2001) and that the decentralized nature of the Internet and the inexpensive nature of the technology complicates the Chinese government’s control over the medium (Taubman, 2002). Following the same line of inquiry,

Government surveillance and civil discourse on blogosphere

Over the years, researchers have argued that surveillance and governance have been facilitated in the information-technology-saturated society (Gandy, 1993, Lyon, 1993), resulting in the end of privacy (Whitaker, 1999). In China and some Asian countries, such as Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia, cyberspace is a realm of government surveillance (Deibert, 2002, Hong, 2001, Kluver and Banerjee, 2005, Neumann, 2001, Rodan, 1998). The contemporary challenge of a surveillance society has drawn

Conclusion

Researchers have long recognized the connection between economic development, political reform, and democracy. Increased trade and economic integration promote civil and political freedoms directly by opening a closed society to new technologies, communications, and democratic ideas. Yet, the reality of China today does not fully respond to those theoretical assumptions between trade, free markets, and civil rights. China has launched definitive reform towards a market open to foreign

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