China Beat Archive
China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012
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Date of this Version
2012
Document Type
Article
Citation
2012 Jan 17 in The China Beat http://www.thechinabeat.org/
Abstract
The Chinese internet is a wonderfully raucous and interesting place. It has greatly expanded the scope of public discourse and activity, despite the party-state’s extensive censorship regime. Not surprisingly, the world’s largest cyber-community exhibits tremendous depth and diversity: progressive cyber-activists and professional agitators; navel-gazing starlets and steam-venting gamers; mundane infotainment and the banal waxing of quotidian life; and, sadly, dark corners of fear, hatred and paranoia. It’s all there; it simply depends on where one looks. Like other technologies before it, the internet is normatively neutral, and thus can be put to good, bad and anodyne uses: individuals—not tools—shape the contours of different societies and their cultures.
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Asian History Commons, Asian Studies Commons, Chinese Studies Commons, International Relations Commons
Comments
Copyright 2012 James Leibold.