Behind the great firewall of China

Social media has become a popular tool for communication and entertainment in households throughout most of the world.

 

 The largest population in the world of internet users is in fact China, however China also has one of the most restricted internets around the world. Great Firewall is said to be the" most technically sophisticated internet filtering/censorship systems in the world".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Internet access in China is provided by 8 Internet service providers (ISP), which are controlled by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. There are three main ways ISP's block online content:

There are many complex and multi-layered systems in place to censor the citizens of China from information that the government believes is threatening. China's

• IP blocking
• DNS hijacking
• keyword content inspection/filtering

There is currently a website you can go to, to discover what internet sites are actually blocked in real time in China. Could you imagine getting on your computer or phone and logging on to our much loved sites of  Facebook or Twitter and being told the site has been censored and is not accessible. The people of China are not completely without social media sites, there are substitutes in place to allow the Chinese to communicate via the Internet such as namely, Baidu (search engine like Google), Sina Weibo (micro blogging like twitter), Renren (equivalent of Facebook) and Youku Tudou (Video site like YouTube).

 

 

Chiu, Lin and Silverman (2013, pg.1)  claim that "social media is exploding worldwide and China is leading the way". Yes social media has really taken off worldwide, but as for China leading the way I have to disagree. Of course most countries including Australia have some censorships but nothing like China, what is happening to human rights and freedom? I hope China doesn't lead the way of the social media realm I certainly do not want my internet usage constantly watched and censored, what people do in their spare time on the internet is up to them not the government.

 

To be honest I never quite knew the extent to which Chinas internet is censored I never knew there were so many substitute platforms available to the citizens of China. It just goes to show how much the government can control and influence peoples lives.