The Great Firewall of China is the expurgation of any sensitive content that can be found on the Internet. The intention of the Chinese government is simple: they employ individuals to remove threatening and/or embarrassing information that diverges from socially acceptable norms, through the surveillance of the Internet. The reason behind this is that they are under the assumption that their residents will fall prey to malicious cultures and values if they source inappropriate material. This week we were presented with statistics suggesting that, with 513 million Internet users in 2011 (Chiu, Lin & Silverman, 2012) the Chinese population should be dominating social networking websites. However, we were informed that Chinese consumers have restricted access from many popular platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, contradicting this ideology. Instead, this country has many replacement platforms, as reviewed by Thomas Crampton (2011). Crampton (2011) compares the Chinese social platforms Youku and Tudou (YouTube), Sina Weibo (Twitter) and various versions of Facebook, evaluating that there are improvements in the conventions and technical affordances of the Chinese digital sites. For example, Sina Weibo is the most used microblogging website and has similar affordances to Twitter. The major difference is that Sina Weibo consents more preferences when responding to another person’s comment. In addition, while the character limit still stands at 140 characters, Chinese consumers using Chinese logograms, can in fact use up to 400 English characters when the message is translated. As seen in Chiu, Lin and Silverman’s (2012) paper, China is renowned for a vast effect on online shopping than any other country in the world. The figures in this paper also suggest that China is the leading country in social media practices and engagement via computers, laptops or smartphones. But with limitations in their social network sites, how can we transpose this data and equally compare it with that of the globe? From this knowledge, we can deduce that there are many different technological advances and boundaries between Australia and China. I honestly can’t grasp the fact that China has blocked Facebook, YouTube and Twitter from social media use and if it was not discussed in this week’s lecture, I would have had no idea about it. I’m sure that I am not alone in the sense that I would feel so disconnected from the rest of the world and from my family and relatives overseas if we could not connect as we regularly as we do on the same platforms. Understandably, censorship is required and although they have substitute digital platforms, China has taken it to an unfamiliar level of content restraint. Would this mean that the Chinese population is secluded from any uprisings around the world? What does this mean for them if they decide to travel overseas and they experience culture shock? Will the Government continue to monitor the Internet after 20 or 30 years and will other countries follow in the footsteps of the Chinese Government?
