Online contribution practices in countries that engage in internet blocking and censorship

Abstract

In this article we describe people's online contribution practices in contexts in which the government actively blocks access to or censors the Internet. We argue that people experience blocking as confusing, as a motivation for self-censorship online, as a cause of impoverishment of available content and as a real threat of personal persecution. Challenging ideas of blocking as a monolithic, abstract policy, we discuss five strategies with which Internet users navigate blocking: self-censorship, cultivating technical savvy, reliance on social ties to relay blocked content, use of already blocked sites for content production as a form of protection and practiced transparency. We also discuss strategies that forum owners and blogging platform providers employ to deal with and to avoid blocking. We conclude by advocating for more research that acknowledges the complexity of the contexts in which all Internet users contribute to the Internet and social media.

Censorship and deletion practices in Chinese social media

“…Messages that self-identify as originating from the outlying provinces of Tibet, Qinghai, and Ningxia are deleted at phenomenal rates: up to 53% of all messages originating from Tibet are deleted, compared with 12% from Beijing and 11.4% for Shanghai. We might suspect that higher rates of deletion in these areas may be connected with their histories of unrest (especially in Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, and Xinjiang), but there are several possible alternative explanations: Sina censors may be deleting messages with greater frequency due to increased attention to these areas, perhaps enabled by the comparatively small volume of messages originating from them-the deletion rate by province is negatively rank correlated with message volume (Kendall's τ = −.73); an alternative explanation is that users themselves are self-censoring at higher rates (Shklovski and Kotamraju, 2011).…”

Why do people seek anonymity on the internet?

“…When the websites that participants wanted to browse violated government policy restrictions, interviewees sometimes chose to browse anonymously. Other interviewees in this situation, however, decided not to be anonymous in order to appear "normal" (see [28]). One man told us that he liked to visit subversive websites out of curiosity but would never register or post for fear of drawing government suspicion.…”

“…People in countries whose governments censor the Internet say they execute self-censorship and may avoid seeking anonymity explicitly so as not to cast suspicion on themselves [28], but cultural factors, such as a cultural belief in respect for authority, could be at work as well. In our study, Chinese interviewees weighed relational factors especially heavily when choosing to hide their identity.…”

Secretly Political: Civic Engagement in Online Publics in Kazakhstan

“…The majority of online speech, however, is not directly monitored by the government, but through pressuring providers of online spaces such as discussion forums or blog platforms to manage and control the speech in evidence. This kind of outsourcing of censorship to the private sector has been commonly observed in authoritarian regimes (MacKinnon, 2009;Shklovski & Kotamraju, 2011). The practice of such control usually manifests in heavy content moderation oriented toward encouraging self-censorship and caution in the users.…”