2 February 2005
Beijing Moves to Curb "Blogging Revolution"
1 February 2005
In China, blogging has become one of the fastest growing phenomena on the Internet, with users numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Easy to use and free, blogs - or online diary websites - allow people to express their opinions and share information and news otherwise censored by the state-controlled media, reports "New Scientist."
Author Xiao Qiang says blogging services are sprouting all over China, with more than 45 hosting providers as of October 2004. "Blogs play an important role in republishing and spreading information as quickly as it is banned from official websites," says Xiao.
In contrast to online chat rooms and bulletin boards, which require messages to be moderated, blogs allow users to post anything they want on their sites. They also allow readers to post comments and link to each other's blogs.
Fearing the spread of uncontrolled online information, the Chinese government is devoting increasing resources to monitoring and censoring blogs.
A recent study by The OpenNet Initiative found that China's three main blog service providers - blogcn.com, blogbus.com and blogdriver.com - installed filtering technology in 2004 to control the content of blogs.
Now, when users post content on blogs, the filtering tool looks for keywords to block, such as national minorities' independence movements, the Tiananmen massacre of 1989, Chinese communist leaders, Falun Gong and words referring to uprisings or suppression.
Still, Xiao argues that the growing number of blogs on the Internet makes it impossible for authorities to censor all of them. "Their potential for building networks of people and disseminating news cannot be underestimated."
Read his feature story here: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996707
See:
- The OpenNet Initiative Report: http://www.opennetinitiative.net/bulletins/008/
- Committee to Protect Bloggers: http://committeetoprotectbloggers.blogspot.com/
- IFEX Alerts on Censorship in China: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/147/
- Reporters sans frontières: http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=273
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