4 Discussion Posts about China's Government

For this assignment there are going to be 4 Discussion Posts.

For your first post this week, define, summarize, analyze, and evaluate the main ideas in the videos about Morozov and Shirky.  Discuss their dystopian and utopian ideas about how the Internet can either strengthen dictatorships or empower civil society and democracy in cyberspace.

In your second post, use Morozov’s and Shirky’s ideas to discuss and evaluate Min Jiang’s essay.  Does it take a dystopian or utopian view of the Internet and social media in China?  Offer evidence from the article to support your point of view.

For your third and fourth posts, summarize, analyze, and evaluate the main ideas in the articles by Svensson and by Shi and Yang. Do these authors take a dystopian or a utopian view of the Internet and social media in China?  Support your point of view with evidence from these articles e.g., quotations, examples, etc.

· Resources:

deLisle, Jacques, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang, eds., The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China. This title is available as an E-book on the Utica College Library homepage. Read all the following sections and chapters, listed below:

Introduction: “The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, “ by

Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang, pp. 1-9; p.16: read only the third paragraph that begins “Third, the latest waves….or in other online forums.” This paragraph relates to something Shirky discusses in his first video on China’s social media; and read Dynamism and Complexity: Ongoing Change, New Challenges, and Regime Responses, pp. 26-27.

Ch. 1: “The Co-Evolution of the Internet, (Un-) Civil Society, and Authoritarianism in China” by Min Jiang, pp. 28-48.

Ch. 2: “Connectivity, Engagement, and Witnessing on China’s Weibo,” by Marina Svensson, pp. 49-70.

Ch. 3: “New Media Empowerment and State-Society Relations in China,” by Zhengzhi Shi and Guobin Yang, pp. 71-85.

Pei, Minxin. China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2008. Conclusion, pp. 205-218.

· Required Videos (total time appx. 87 min.) Use the close caption system for the Morozov videos if you have difficulty understanding them. Note: this system does not translate Russian, Chinese, German, and French into English, but Morozov summarizes those speakers comments.

Evgeny Morozov: How The Internet Strengthens Dictatorships, TED Talk, (min. 11:51).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hFk6FDrZBc

Documentary, Evgeny Morozov: The End of Cyper-Utopia (49:16 min.) Ai Weiwei is the artist/dissident/blogger who appears in this video around 16:00 min., riding in a car. Also toward the beginning off the video, Morozov mentions “illiberal adaptation,” discussed by Minxin Pei in the first few pages of Ch. 2, “Democratizing China?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmTmg1GkrY

Pen America: China’s Social Media Censorship Creates Dilemma for Writers (Clay Shirky), (10:17 min.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLJS9qxTgHQ

How Social Media Can Make History—Clay Shirky, TED-ED Talk, 15:48 min.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASZJE15E0SY

Discussion Post Sample:

The "Panopticon Effect" is a method used by the government of China to keep citizens in check at all times possible. In her book, MacKinnon describes the Panopticon Effect as a way to " give prisoners credible proof that they are under surveillance some of the time, though not all of the time. If they have no way of knowing exactly when they are being watched, they end up having to assume they are under surveillance all the time." (MacKinnon,2012, p80). Based on Bentham's design, she also argues that " When people are unaware of being monitored, at least some of the time, without clear information about exactly how and when the surveillance is taking place, against whom, and according to what specific criteria, people will choose to avoid trouble and modify their behavior in ways that are often subtle and even subconscious."(MacKinnon,2012, p80).

China's practice of the Panopticon Effect is in use as a daily routine. Citizens are constantly being monitored by face and object recognition cameras and technologies that allow government officials to acquire data and compare the data acquired against the information on a database. Facial recognition is measured by "identifying all of the faces in a given image. For each face, the algorithm measures out key data points like the distance between the eyes or the color of the skin and then use those measurements to create a template that can be compared against other faces in a database." (Wall Street Journal, 2017). Not only are the Chinese monitored by cameras, but also by the daily applications they use on their electronic devices (discussed in the last paragraph).

Everywhere in China there are checkpoints in which each citizen's id card is revised. In the video "Life Inside China's Total Surveillance State", the journalist from the Wall Street Journal makes emphasis on how strict is life for the Chinese due to the constant surveillance implemented by the government. Some of the aspects touched on the video included the fact that if a citizen wants to buy a weapon, the weapon is then "tied to the buyer's identification card" (Wall Street Journal, 2017). This enforces security and allows for faster profiling of criminals during or after the commission of crimes, however, for innocent people this seems very unnecessary. The implementation of surveillance goes above and beyond and allows the government to manipulate the citizens like puppets, and use them as a way to test new technologies.

In China, almost every citizen makes use of the "WeChat" application, which not only does it offer social network features, but also is used to "pay utility bills, pay for food, rent items, take a taxi, buy tickets for events, such as movie tickets, and even rent hotel rooms and book flights." (China Uncensored, 2017). This application offers facial recognition as well as an addition to the features mentioned above. The drawback to this application is that the government has full access to everyone's information within the WeChat databases. The government has the ability to listen to conversations over the phone due to its ability to activate microphones, as well as being capable of tracking the user's location and activities. Basically, the users have to live with the fact that they are being watched from the moment they sign up to use the app.

References:

MacKinnon, R. (2012). Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Wall Street Journal. (2017, June 27). Next-Level Surveillance: China Embraces Facial Recognition. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq1SEqNT-7c

China Uncensored (2017, August 23) WeChat: The App That's Always Watching You . Retrieved March 27, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMHwVU-8BHM

Wall Street Journal (2017, December 20). Life Inside China's Total Surveillance State. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ5LnY21Hg