The Future of Freedom In The Internet Age

Today there’s a big push to make Internet Access a basic human right. In the US, the majority of us take freedom of speech (online and offline) for granted and we tune out the debates on heavy censorship that is commonplace in other countries. If you’re not aware of the kind of control and manipulation that’s happening in other places in the world, these two video interviews (back to back in the same video) will help bring you up to speed quickly. The first interview is with Rebecca MacKinnon, who is a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. Before leaving television to become a blogger and co-founder of Global Voices Online. She is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Center and lives in Hong Kong. The second interview is with Evgeny Morozov, who is currently a fellow at the Open Society Institute in New York. Previously, he was Director of New Media at the Prague-based NGO Transitions Online (TOL) and a columnist for the Russian newspaper Akzia (2003-2008).

Here’s a summary of the content that’s covered in the interviews. Enjoy.

1. Internal Web Censorship In China & The Great Firewall of China
2. Blogging In China
3. Chinese Internet Police
4. How Humor Slips Through The Cracks of Censorship
5. Russian Internet Censorship
6. Russian New Media and Government Manipulation
7. In Depth on Hidden Censorship in Russia
8. Economic Crisis’ Impact on China and Russia
9. The Global Network Initiative
10. Moving to Other Blogging Platforms, How Informed Citizens Are
11. Humor can lead to Meaningful Action
12. Web Questions
13. Knowing Fake Commenters
14. The Use of Anonymizers
15. Web Use and the Secret Service on Web in Russia
16. Penalty for Companies Not Censoring Content
17. Mobile Trends
18. Data Integration, Search Capacity In China