Control of Media

Navarria, Giovanni

doi:10.1007/978-981-13-3293-7_9

Giovanni Navarria²

259 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and provides the readers with an in-depth look on the role digital communication media networks play in helping the government of Beijing maintain control over its citizens. The chapter assesses the government’s overall strategy and the multiple facets of its elaborate electronic surveillance system. The chapter also pays attention to the role non-governmental actors, such as private Internet companies play in strengthening the system, by complying proactively with the government’s diktats and operating rumour-control and website-cleaning teams; at the less kindly face of state censorship of digital media such as imprisonment and cyber-attacks.

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Notes

1.
Lin 1936, 167–70.
2.
Hachten 2010, 20.
3.
Lu 1979, 45.
4.
Dikötter 2010, 324–34.
5.
Hachten 2010, 21.
6.
Zhao 1998, 47–51.
7.
Reporters Without Borders 2010.
8.
Bandurski and Hala 2010; Y. Chan, Liang, and Huang 2019; Reporters Without Borders 2019.
9.
Zhou 2006, 135–38.
10.
L. Xia 2019.
11.
CNNIC 2016; see also: Cao, Suttmeier, and Simon 2009.
12.
Ma, Chung, and Thorson 2005, 22–23.
13.
The statistics are from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, however as the number of mobile users is about 94% of the population, it is fair to assume that many of these users have more than one number. Adam Hwang 2015; L. Xia 2019.
14.
Cao, Suttmeier, and Simon 2009; see also: Kennedy, Suttmeier, and Su 2008; and Bichler and Schmidkonz 2012.
15.
CNNIC 2018.
16.
Wübbeke et al. 2016.
17.
China Daily 2015; Wang et al. 2017; for Taobao Villages see: Luo 2018; and Qi, Zheng, and Guo 2019.
18.
CNNIC 2018.
19.
K.-M. Chan 2010.
20.
Hu 2007.
21.
MacKinnon 2013, 36–37, 133–39; HRW 2006, 30–72.
22.
CCP 2012; Creemers 2012.
23.
The English term surveillance derives from the French, surveillir, to watch over, which is itself related to the Latin verb vigilare, to be vigilant, usually of possible peril approaching. In its most general and widespread use, surveillance indicates a ‘focused, systematic, and routine attention to personal details for purposes of influence, management, protection or direction’. And it is never the result of random or occasional strategies of control. It relies on specific techniques and protocols. It is also routine because it is part of everyday life in ‘all societies that depend on bureaucratic administration and some kinds of information technology’. Though individuals have usually been the ultimate target of surveillance systems, the more the technology develops the more its target broadens, to include not only individuals as a whole, but more specifically their existence as billions of bits of electronic data. Surveillance technology has also another important characteristic, which is relevant to the topic discussed in this chapter: it ‘is not simply applied; it is also experienced by subjects, agents and audiences who define, judge and have feelings about being watched or a watcher’. Lyon 2007, 14; Marx 2016, 173.
24.
Walton 2001.
25.
The analogy is used by Fang Binxing, former President of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and a key developer of the core technology behind the Great Firewall, during an interview with Global Times, February 18, 2011; see: Global Times 2011.
26.
MacKinnon 2009.
27.
CIW Team 2019.
28.
Roberts 2018, 164–65.
29.
The page on the Global Times was first censored and then reappeared two days later, see: Henochowicz 2013; see also: Farris 2013; see original piece Global Times 2013.
30.
“Provisional Regulations for the Development and Management of Instant Messaging Tools and Public Information Services” 2014.
31.
MacKinnon 2013, 36–37, 133–39; HRW 2006, 12; CCP 2012.
32.
Mozur 2014.
33.
RSF 2005.
34.
Villeneuve 2008; Crandall et al. 2013.
35.
Freedom House 2018.
36.
C. Xia 2014.
37.
For estimates about the number of censors see: King, Pan, and Roberts 2014; see also: Patience 2013.
38.
Stokes, Lin, and Hsiao 2011, 3.
39.
Wee and Oreskovic 2011; McAfee Labs 2010.
40.
Marczak et al. 2015.
41.
Qiang 2014.
42.
McCarthy 2017.
43.
Freedom House 2018.

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University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
Giovanni Navarria

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Navarria, G. (2019). Control of Media. In: The Networked Citizen. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3293-7_9

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3293-7_9
Published: 29 October 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3292-0
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3293-7
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