HW 11: "Making Global Voices Heard"

When reading the first page MacKinnon goes into talking about how blogosphere is a way for people in other countries to understand things in a better way. So that is why I decided to look at what MacKinnon calls her "current musings" at rconversation.blogs.com/. In the reading MacKinnon is asked how weblogs affects other countries, she responds by saying "In China for instance, you have a situation where all the newspapers and online news sites are controlled. Many of them may be commercially owned but the Chinese communist party still has quite a bit of control over what can and can't be said"(Kline, 327) Of course many people will probably disagree with this assertion that the Chinese can't say things that we would normally be able to post on a blog and not have to worry about it being taken down, but in reality they DO have to watch the things they say. After reading that in David Kline’s 'Bog', I clicked on a featured post on RConversation called "Tough times for Chinese bloggers", this post has a red, black and white picture above it featuring something written out in Chinese and has what looks like many people shouting and cheering holding things in their hands. I think this Blog still corresponds to MacKinnon’s view of it, because this Post goes on to say "Starting this month we've seen blog posts being deleted in places where they almost never used to, comment sections being closed out of fear..." (http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/09/tough-times-for.html). The Chinese are monitored with was put up on the Internet and they have to be careful. MacKinnon talks about how interesting the things Chinese have to say are, but at the same time how censored most of it is too. "The mainstream media doesn't like to challenge authority or point out corruption" (Kline, 329)