Censorship in China

I thought that our discussion on censorship and the way that media occurs in China was very interesting. Practices of Looking says that media provides a venue for all to speak out. The internet is not a place highly guarded by anyone, we are mainly free to do and say whatever we want or so I thought. However, this is not the case in China. China has a ban on certain websites, and things written that are extremely critical are normally taken away within seconds. This is kind of like big brother in that someone is always watching. There are also certain key words that if searched on a search engine will bring little or no results. This is crazy to me because the internet is one of the main ways that people get information and if things are blocked then how are people supposed to get information in this digital age? In most parts of the country, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are all blocked. This is obviously in an attempt to silence people's opinions, especially after important events, like riots. It seems as though China's firewall is not too hard to crack though, so I guess information is leaking out and people are able to access it if they know how to do these types of things with computers.

In regards to the Olympics, I found numerous articles going back and forth on the issue about censorship. It seemed as though there was a sense that they were going to lift the ban on the internet and then they went back on their word. The articles seem to say that it was unclear what the Chinese were going to do and one even said that only some restrictions were going to be taken away for journalists. I know from my experience that I did have Facebook in China, so they must have taken away some restrictions at least in Beijing. I can see how this would be a big deal, because if journalists and reporters do not have access to all sorts of different media and news sites, their jobs would be made very challenging. Of course China would not want bad press from reporters or tourists, so they had to lift some of their ban in order to accomodate foreigners. I know that going on the internet is monitored by people, but in China I feel like it is much more closely monitored which sometimes makes me worried about the fact that I went on facebook through their server. I guess one of the big things about internet is that you don't know who is watching or who has access to your information which is what makes it mysterious and kind of worrisome. As the internet has progressed, firewalls and all sorts of systems have been put in place to protect us, but that only means that their are computer geniuses out there somewhere who are working extra hard to figure out how to defeat those types of protection. It is like anything else in life, we need to be careful and pay attention to what we are doing and who we are giving our information to. Media can be a very powerful thing, but it also has its drawbacks.