Apologies for the lack of posts the past week, but I am back.
As the 2500 word essay for my New Media, New Asia subject draws near, I thought I should write a final blog post on it just to get all my ideas and thoughts in-line. When I last wrote up a post about this, my idea was very broad: how the Chinese government tried to censor the Wenzhou train incident, but as the time went by, my mind narrowed down to something more specific; something more… interesting. I want to delve into the psychological side of this issue and focus less on China but on different governments around the world. I want to discuss how the government can so easily transform people’s mindsets (all these mind-games!!).
People in China have habitually started censoring themselves on topics that might get them into hot water, because they do not know when the government will be reading/watching what they post online. I will argue about the possibility in which the government knew this would happen when they brought up censorship in the first place. #conspiracy?
So for this essay, I will bring up:
– general examples arounds the world (one can be the Wenzhou train incident)
– self-censorship
– social media
– a type of political system (in any country)
Quick thoughts:
Why do Japanese people use Twitter more than Facebook?
If you compare Facebook and Twitter, Facebook is a much more vain social media website. Facebook is about the humblebrag (subtly letting others know how amazing your life is – or how amazing you think your life is), whereas Twitter is less “in-your-face”. Maybe because, even though there are more tweets per minute than Facebook posts, this causes the minimal characters to become camouflaged. Twitter lets users self-efface, meaning it allows them to not draw as much attention to themselves; masking yourself. In Japanese culture, one of the major offences is to be ego-centric and self-centered. This could be the main reason why Twitter is more popular in Japan than Facebook is. It may not be a conscious thing that people thought about when deciding which social media to sign up for, but the fact that it has been embedded into their philosophy for hundreds of years, it becomes their natural instinct and a mindset they are immersed in.
In class today we were asked the following questions:
What does anonymity mean to you? Think about the different types of social medias you use – do you talk to different people on each media? And how do you represent yourself in each one? Are you different on them compared to how you are in real life?
Everyone has a sense of anonymity whether it be in the online world or in real life. You cannot say you have no anonymity whatsoever – it all depends on the degree of anonymity (this word is so hard to type) you decide to have. And it can be different for each person, taking celebrities as an example, who do not have as much anonymity (as some may like) and it is never one-hundred percent up to them how much they can keep private or how much is shared for the public eye.
Facebook and Instagram are the two social media platforms I use the most.
I use Facebook mostly to talk to my friends and have the occasional scroll through the newsfeed (though this does not interest me as much anymore). I do not upload many photos or post any statuses on this website either – most of the photos I have on my profile are ones my friends have uploaded and I have been tagged in.
Instagram on the other hand is something I have much more control over. Unlike Facebook, where you easily befriend someone you met once at a party, a friend of a friend who you think you may know, or people you’ve had on there for years just because, I am much more particular on Instagram. I follow accounts with photos that interest me (which mainly consist of high quality photos of New York City, architecture in Amsterdam, the streets of London, people living on the other side of the world I like and of course, fashion accounts (both men and women’s) that I like the “looks” of. And with the photos I choose to upload on Instagram, I am also quite picky with them. I don’t post a photo unless it is something that jumps out of my camera roll screaming to be uploaded.
I can easily say that I represent myself on Facebook and Instagram the same way as how I represent myself in real life and I would say that about most of my friends aswell – well on Facebook anyway, because 95% of the people I follow on Instagram, I do not know in real life.
In my New Media, New Asia class, the class was split into two to debate whether censorship is or is not a beneficial thing, especially in Asian countries.
My team won this debate as we successfully argued why strict censorships are wrong.
We were shown this video of a 16-year-old boy named Amos Yee, ranting about why the death of former Singaporean president, Lee Kuan Yew’s death was the best thing to happen to that country and its people. Even though the boy and his video was deemed wrong by the government and he was prosecuted, more than 300,000 people (now even more if you are reading this and decide to watch the video), viewed this on YouTube. It makes you question: would this many people have watched the video if it wasn’t made such a big deal by the Singaporean government in the first place?
The attempt on censoring this video, gave him even more credibility, and the act becomes almost self-defeating, in a way. If a 16-year-old kid is having these thoughts, then I am sure many more people will be having the same thoughts; if not yet, especially will now after viewing the video rant. In the end, censorship has lead to more problems overall.
Here is the video:
Some arguments that were brought up to why censorship should be fought against is the simple fact that expressing oneself is a universal right!
If the nation if a developing nation, then creating walls to hide the truth is not allowing people to learn and develop. The government is supposed to represent us, the people. If the government, who are meant to be representing our ideas, are preventing us from actually voicing them, then what is the point of having this authority?
We had the freedom to vote for them, yet if they are then forcing ideas down our throats and restricting our thoughts then that takes away the initial freedom we had to make them leaders.
Back to the Singaporean government, freedom of expression appears in their constitution; they’ve signed the charter of human rights that guarantees freedom of expression.
If they weren’t able to follow through on this, then they should not have have signed the documents in the first place, as this makes them less credible as a government – especially in the context of censorship.
You cannot create the social harmony many people are trying so hard to form in the world if there are still so many restrictions on freedom of expression and speech.
If you cannot talk about something, then the problem cannot be fixed.
When the people do not know what the government is doing, then corruption will arise very easily.
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
In my ‘New Media, New Asia’ class, we have been discussing how new media shapes events and practices in Asia and are about to write a 2500 word essay on a topic of our choice. (Never have I had to write an essay of this length. Even in all my English and Literature classes during high school, 1500 has always been the maximum word limit. Let’s see how I go with something nearly double the size)
Anyway…
I have chosen to discuss the government’s online censorships in China. The idea is that, even though the government is not always watching over people’s shoulders, it is the thought of it that that brings people to censoring themselves. Not knowing when or how much the government is following, people have habitually become more minded and guarded with what they post online (whether it be bad-mouthing the government or saying something against one of the country’s policies).
One example is from 2011 when a train derailed in the Chinese city of Wenzhou, causing harm to many people and the death of others, witnesses took photos and videos to share online through various forms of social media. When the sharing got out of hand, the government began censoring all the images and posts in order to keep their reputation of being a “perfect” power.
People expressed their anger about this through, what else, but social media. They demanded to have unfettered news and for the Communist party to stop with their propaganda.
This is only one example of how new media shapes different events. I am still in the researching stage of this essay so will return with more when I can. 🙂
Everybody’s notions of privacy has changed as the years go by, as they grow older and most importantly, as society changes. Privacy does not have the same meaning now as it did in let’s say, 2005. The main thing that comes to mind for me is how people used Facebook when it first became a “thing”.
I remember constantly talking to my friends through “wall-posts”; posting messages to them on their public wall where everyone can see and sometimes even sending them details on an upcoming event (“meet you tomorrow at 10:00am, Flinders Street”) for all their friends, my friends and whoever else to know. It’s ridiculous to think about that now because all communication is “private” nowadays, with people keeping in contact through private chats, texts and phone calls. You choose who you want your information to go to.
Is privacy a right or a responsibility? I believe that privacy is both a right and a responsibility.
For example, one’s privacy rights can disappear once they have done something illegal and investigations are necessary. Yet it is also a responsibility because it is up to you what kind of information you give out.
(You cannot passively assume that everybody will respect your data)
Onto the topic of not assuming everybody will respect your data, data brokerage is something I learnt about the other day in my ‘New Media, New Asia’ class. I know it’s been happening but had never heard the term before. Data brokerage, “in the name of commerce” is the act of websites collecting our personal information in order to sell them to different companies (often without our knowledge).
This information is used by companies to, mainly, try and sell us things.
I’ve thought about this many times in my life when I’m on YouTube or Facebook or even Urban Outfitters, and I see an advertisement for something that I may have searched a couple of times in the past days. The first question to pop into my mind is: “how did they know”. It’s like Big Brother…
And now back to what I’ve mentioned earlier about privacy, it is because people have become habituated to certain websites and aren’t as careful with their information anymore. You think that what you do on a certain website stays on that certain website and suddenly disappears the second you cross the window, but it doesn’t.
Everybody has a digital footprint.
Now to conclude my longest blog post up to date, here is an article about something I saw on the news the other day, where people have found a way to download their entire Google history. Is that scary for you? Interesting? Funny? Curious? Nervous? Well it depends on what you’ve been Googling…
