RConversation

links for 2008-05-19

• Shanghaiist: Online implications for the three days of national mourning; Public entertainment venues to shut?
  Translation of the regulations, followed by some commentary and twitter reports.
  (tags: china earthquake chineseinternetresearch internet censorship)

links for 2008-05-17

• IGP Blog :: The U.S. Congress and “free speech principles on the Internet” [cough]
  "It is important for U.S. policy makers to let go of the idea that U.S. oversight has anything to do with preserving and protecting freedom of expression on the Internet."
  (tags: congress ICANN netgovernance freespeech)
• Far Eastern Economic Review | China's Holistic Censorship Regime
  "In fact, conflating the interests of the Chinese Communist Party with the interests of businesses operating in China is what makes China Inc. work. "
  (tags: china business csr humanrights freespeech politics censorship surveillance chineseinternetresearch)

links for 2008-05-16

• China relaxes grip on internet and media after quake | The Australian
  I'm quoted in this article explaining why there hasn't been so much censorship on quake coverage compared to other recent disasters.
  (tags: china earthquake media journalism censorship freespeech internet)
• China Media Project » Qian Gang: the government must be have a tolerant approach to social tension in the disaster area
  David Bandurski translates an essay in Caijing by Chinese journalist Qian Gang, author of the seminal book on the Tangshan Earthquake.
  (tags: china earthquake freespeech humanrights journalism media censorship propaganda)
• China Digital Times » Chinese Bloggers on the History and Influence of the “Fifty Cent Party”
  "The “Fifty Cent Party,” (”五毛党”) professional Internet commentators hired by provincial and local authorities, have become one mechanism to eliminate the online opinions that are critical of the government."
  (tags: china internet chineseinternetresearch propaganda freespeech blogs bbs)
• China Digital Times » Chinese Intellectuals Contemplate the Earthquake: Lessons We Are Learning
  Several "compared the government’s openness during the current earthquake with its hiding of information during Tangshan Earthquake in 1976."
  (tags: china earthquake media journalism propaganda censorship freespeech)
• EastSouthWestNorth: Daily Brief Comments May 11-10, 2008
  A new form of Chinese micro-journalism: QQ reporting. One journalist uses QQ to report on the Sichuan earthquake aftermath.
  (tags: earthquake china journalism internet newmedia QQ tencent freespeech)
• EastSouthWestNorth: Sorry, But I'll Have To Hurt Your Feelings
  Yang Hengjun explains why criticism of official relief response is justified and necessary.
  (tags: earthquake china journalism internet freespeech nationalism blogs blogging)

links for 2008-05-14

• The Sichuan Quake and the Hubris of Twitter Users
  Kaiser Kuo argues Twitter was a complement to, not a replacement for, MSM coverage of China's earthquake.
  (tags: china earthquake media internet chineseinternetresearch journalism newmedia)
• China Media Project » Blog Archive » Chang Ping: police should tolerate public information sharing in the earthquake’s aftermath
  David Bandurski translates veteran journalist's essay about the importance of free speech in times of disaster.
  (tags: earthquake china chineseinternetresearch journalism media freespeech internet)
• China Digital Times » China’s Nationalism, and How Not to Deal with It
  CDT translates: "An interesting analytical commentary on China’s latest wave of (ultra-)nationalism, and how the West lessons from dealing with Germany’s in 1930s."
  (tags: nationalism china)
• 公安部:严打借四川地震故意制造散播谣言者_时政新闻_新闻_腾讯网
  "《通知》还要求，要加强对手机、互联网的监控，正确引导舆论，要切实加强值班备勤，及时报告重大紧急情况"
  (tags: china earthquake censorship surveillance police law)

Help China's quake victims!

I just donated US$500 to help Chinese earthquake victims. I plan to give more if you also help out.

I've got a bunch of information sources going simultaneously: I switch between the BBC and CNN International, I watch my Google Reader aggregator to see what all my subscribed news sites are reporting and what the bloggers I know In China are saying. QQ is aggregating citizen video reports from the quake zone. The Global Voices China team have been linking to a lot of blogs inside and outside of China who are aggregating quake information. And I've also been keeping an eye on Twitter. There is an extremely active community of people on Twitter trading links in Chinese and English from blogs, mainstream media, official sources, secondhand information from friends and colleagues, first-hand eyewitness experiences etc. etc. Quite a number of journalists seem to be lurking there and using Twitter to find English-speaking eyewitness sources who live in Sichuan. I agree with Kaiser Kuo, Twitter doesn't replace the excellent journalism being done by Chinese journalists, citizens, and international reporters who are on the scene in Sichuan; but it is providing a valuable platform for rapid group discussion and information-trading on the quake - amplified by uber-blogger-twitterers like Robert Scoble. If the Olympic torch protests divided East and West, this disaster is bringing people together again.

Meanwhile, for serious China-wonks out there here's an interesting factoid: Wang Zhenyao, who currently heads disaster relief for China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, used to be in charge of village elections in the Chinese countryside during the 1990s. (See this Washington Post article from 10 years ago: "A Quiet Bureaucrat, Promoting The Vote One Village at a Time")

(And yes.. I'm back online... still recovering from something called an abdominal myomectomy: a pretty major operation to remove a bunch of tumors that had caused so much blood loss and anemia that by late March I was not very functional. I'm still pretty weak, have dizzy/nauseous spells, and get completely exhausted after walking for an hour and can't lift anything heavy, and my doctor wants me to take a full 6 weeks off from work, but I've started working from home and will probably make forays into the office soon.)

links for 2008-05-13

• Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions - Los Angeles Times
  "As more Americans are watched, fewer cases are made. The trend concerns civil liberties groups as well as some lawmakers and legal experts."
  (tags: surveillance privacy freedom freespeech democracy u.s.a. law)
• Freedom of expression and government reform
  Danwei's Joel Martinsen translates an essay by Zi Zhongjun (资中筠) of the Academy of Social Sciences on freedom of expression and institutional reform.
  (tags: china freespeech reform media press journalism politics)
• Pacific Epoch - Sichuan Earthquake Tears Telecom, Video Sites Count Views
  Chinese video sharing sites get huge traffic spikes on earthquake videos.
  (tags: china video citizenmedia freespeech internet chineseinternetresearch)

Going offline for a while

I'm going on medical leave today. I am unlikely to return to this blog - to post anything or even to moderate comments - until next month.

So if you post a comment and it never appears, or takes a week to appear, you're not being censored. I'm away.

Since I regularly get e-mails from people who object to my comments moderation policy and who accuse me of censoring, let's just clarify: I always approve all comments unless they contain obscenity, excessive personal attacks or threats. Sometimes things get eaten by the Typepad spam filter. I am not online 24-7 and thus there are delays. I have to moderate comments because if I don't, there will be spam and porn links, and some other occasional nastiness which has no business appearing here. If I didn't moderate comments, another group of people would condemn me for proliferating obscenity and defamation. You can't win.

There have been a lot of things I wanted to write about over the past few weeks related to global media, China, the Internet and the Schizolympics... but I haven't been well enough to do so let alone finish all my other work. Oh well.

Lately I've come across remarks by a couple bloggers around the 'sphere who accuse me (and some other people too) of bias or conspiracy for not writing about this or that. Whatever. I will, however, plead guilty to having major human physical limitations. When I was younger I wished I could be half borg or at least Vulcan or something but no such luck. Maybe in the next lifetime...

links for 2008-04-16

• Jay Rosen: The Uncharted: From Off The Bus to Meet the Press - Off The Bus on The Huffington Post
  Jay Rosen analyzes what happened when a citizen journalist and Obama supporter overcame her doubts and reported Obama's "bitter" remarks at a campaign fundraiser.
  (tags: blogs media obama politics CitizenJournalism citizenmedia newmedia)
• Obama's Speech on Manufacturing and Trade - Council on Foreign Relations
  "if we can spend $10 billion a month rebuilding Iraq, we can spend $15 billion a year in our own country to put Americans back to work and strengthen the long-term competitiveness of our economy."
  (tags: obama politics u.s.a. trade economy china)

links for 2008-04-14

• A trans-Atlantic definition of net neutrality
  "Net neutrality is a state in which users have the freedom to access the content, services, applications, and devices of their choice," resolved the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialog (TACD) in a declaration issued recently.
  (tags: freespeech internet netneutraliy)

links for 2008-04-13

• Visual Communication And Video Publishing - Selected Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Picnic Apr13 08 - Robin Good's Latest News
  "some supercool visual communication tools"
  (tags: howto newmedia)
• China’s Loyal Youth - New York Times
  Matt Forney: "If the debate over Tibet turns this summer’s contests in Beijing into the Human Rights Games, as seems inevitable, Western ticket-holders expecting to find Chinese angry at their government will instead find Chinese angry at them."
  (tags: china tibet olympics nationalism geopolitics humanrights)
• Zeng Jinyan speaks out on Hu Jia’s sentencing at Global Voices Advocacy
  "On the day after her husband’s sentence to 3.5 years in prison for his blogging activities, house arrested blogger Zeng Jinyan wrote a letter explaining her side to their story. Here now thanks to one friendly netizen is an English translation.."
  (tags: hujia humanrights china internet freespeech)