China´s censorship

The republic of China has a variety of laws concerning Internet censorship. The censorship does not apply to Hong Kong or Macau though since are special entities recognized by the international treaty with independent judicial power. The laws of free flow restriction do not all apply to them as well. 

This effort the government has made to delete online opinion follows series of large anti-corruption protesta, ethnic riots and views agains pollution which were organized or made public through the internet. The size of the internet police is thought to be around 50.000. Critical comments appearing on blogs or other websited are often erased within minutes.

This Internet free flow repression is more advanced in China than in any other country in the world. Authorities do not only block websites. They also monitor what individuals access on the Internet. The country has the largest number of cyber dissidents in the world. Most of them are guilty for opposing the government, signing online petitions, having opinion on the end of corruption etc.

 One example of such is Liu Shaokun, a teacher that was sentenced for „inciting a disturbance. He took photos of collapsed schools and posted online in 2008.

Another example from 2008 is Huang Qu, who was arrested for illegally possessing state secrets. He apparently dared to speak with foreign press about the horror of the lost children in the collapsed schools. Well, he did also post information on his website about it, but still I think imprisonment isn´t what he deserved.

At least 18.000 websites are blocked from within the mainland of China. Out of the top 100 global websites used in everyday life for most people, twelve of them are blocked in the country. In 2009, Facebook and Twitter were blocked, it is presumed because of containing things like political commentary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaKjubZBFoY

Hanna

Predicting politics

One of the many things I love about the Internet is that you can find whatever you want on there. At the end of every year I tend to check if predictions various people made about the past year ended up being true. On Youtube for instance you can find a lot of television shows and videos including such predictions.

A good example is the political television show "the Devil´s Advocate" from Colorado:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiVVHt29EI8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrLsTY1BHVM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHIf-L7ch5c&feature=related

It might be fun at the end of 2011 to see if these predictions came true :)


Hanna

The Mosh Pit

I think this clip from Michael Moore's Awful Truth says it all.
I think it says a lot about the internet, the media, politicians, elections, popularity and more. He puts question marks on what is going on, but also leaves a big question mark on himself. He is a great example of a force that people should not take as the holy truth, but makes you rethink things that you maybe took as truth before. He is what we have been talking about before about how media and internet effects politics. It both has a good influence on the information flow and a bad one.
Here Moore puts these 2000 presidential candidates under his big sarcastic question mark!

I chose this clip out of his other stuff when I was thinking about the US presidential elections, refering to my first post. How people can easily twist other peoples actions to make them look different to what they are. I am refering to how one candidate starts talking about Rage Against the Machine as an evil force and how Alan Keyes owes policemen and parents an apology. And also the whole mosh pit thing is just hilarious!

At the end of the day, watching and reading about the endless debates in politics, how a country should be run, what needs to be done, what not, debating, fighting and rambling on, it is great to be able to watch shows like these that put it all into these sarcastic contrasts! Or that is at least my opinion =)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qwDBgNMD7c

Lilja

Internet Scandals Live Forever

For politicians the Internet is not always a good thing. Whatever ends up on the Internet, doesn´t go way that easily if ever. Like in the case of the republican congressman Christopher Lee had to resign because of an Internet scandal.

Last february pictures he sent on an Internet site to a woman, of himself bare-chested along with flirtatious messages were revealed. Ofcourse he was married and the messages were not to his wife.

Icelandic politicians are not excluded from Internet mistakes. In 2008 a congressman named Bjarni Harðarson had to resign after accidentally sending an email to the media which was suppose to go his assistant. 

Just to take another example (and there were a lot to choose from) our readers might remember  the Taiwanese politician Chu Mei-feng who became famous in 2001 when a sex video of her circulated on the internet. It might not be to much suprise but ofcourse the man she was with was married. Chu decided to take advantage of the publicity she gained and released an autobiography the next year.


Hanna

Internet Security: Is the Government Powerless?

A news report sumarizing fears governments have concerning the internet and the information flow.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ZJc-VtxUQ

Lilja

Wikileaks and Iceland

As the internet grows and the information flow seems to be exploding, it is hard to rely on what information is true and which is false.  It is also clear that many governments fear this information flow and most don’t know how to handle it while others seem to accept that they can’t.
The biggest event in matters concerning the internet and politics is, of course, Wikileaks. An Icelandic politician, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, has been involved in this matter,  as she worked with WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. She has now been dealing with the United States government concerning her twitter page.  This is a good example of different governments deal with issues in different ways.

Link:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/birgitta-jonsdottir/

Lilja

Internet and Politics in Russia

The internet has great effect on politics all around the world, including in Russia. New words and slogans have formed from the internet with the huge growth of bloggers and online journalists. The contexts such as “cyber-pessimists” and “cyber-optimism” are a good example. Some say that Russian politicians have joined the “cyber-optimist” side. Also according to Alexey Cahaev, leading ideologist of the ruling party “United Russia”, Internet Democracy is the next step of evolution of democratic institutions.

“Chadaev proposes electronic voting for the next Duma election in 2011, electronic evaluation of officials' performance, as well as battling the digital divide, the development of open software, VOIP services and de-monopolization of online products. None of the initiatives he proposes, however, provide for the creation of sustainable political institutions for citizens.”
“Russian officials were using online tools like Twitter to demonstrate they were close to the people on a personal level, while at the same time avoiding real political change. NGOs and journalists are harassed and threatened, but at least everyone can blog about it. Internet activism, Allnutt writes, is permitted by authoritarian regimes like Russia as long as it serves as a pressure valve for the opposition to let off steam.”

There are also plenty of sites which specialise in Russian anekdoti, Russian jokes, aswell as dirt on the rich and famous among many other things. President Vladimir Putin was quick to grasp the web´s potential and made a stylish campaign website for the March presidential election. During his spell as Prime Minister there was published government news on the government site. It was also on this site that Putin chose to unveik his first “quasi-manifesto, saying notably that great powers should not to be measured in numbers of tanks, but in their ability to create and use advanced technology.”
The second Chechen war, which was launched in 1999 and made Mr Putin's domestic reputation, has in fact been fought both with tanks and technology.


Links:
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/11/30/russia-competing-models-of-internet-politics/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1198603.stm


Lilja