Social Media Censorship In China

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The decentralisation of the Internet has fundamentally changed China’s political landscape. Since then, social networking sites has been expanding rapidly with various platforms such as Weibo, QQ and WeChat being created. Resulting with many academics drawing parallels of the Arab Springs with the potential for a similar occurrence in China, given their analogous authoritarian regime. The importance of social media pertaining to the revolution can be seen with the use of Twitter and Facebook to overthrow the powerful Middle Eastern dictatorship . A protest originating from a mere fruit seller in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazazi , had catalytic effects throughout Middle East as it sparked off various protest and revolutions in the region . Bouazazi …show more content…

While the social media user undoubtedly expanded over the years, the number of activist has not been rising proportionately . Only a small handful are of Chinese users are willing to share activist views online while the rest, in fear of suppression and imprisonment by the CCP, practice ‘self-censorship’ through the fear of being watched . The threat of enforcement of censorship creates a chilling effect as users willingly restrict their thoughts, reserving any form of activism. Hence, this results in netizens utilising social media mainly for entertainment purposes, not effectively utilising social media in a way that challenges the …show more content…

While, Internet usage accounts to an average 71.6% of the population in urban areas, this figure is only a measly 28.4% in rural areas . When further broken down into provinces, only 1/3 of the total provinces has a penetration rate of more than 50% . This means that only a handful of provinces has access to the internet. The fact that Internet usage is only concentrated in the hand urban dwellers poses a challenge to social media activism. The small number of dissidents do not have the mass support base needed to challenge the system. Cases of activism are only available to those in urban areas, making it harder to galvanise and influence the citizens in challenging the status quo. Not only that, revolts are also easier to be clamped down, with them concentrated in an

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