What to know about covering the conventions
If May’s NATO Summit in Chicago is any indication, journalists covering events outside the national political conventions in Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., later this summer can expect that everyone–mainstream media, bloggers, citizen journalists, protesters, and bystanders–will have a camera of one kind or another. With the widespread proliferation of cellphone cameras, capable of recording…
The New York Times takes on China’s censors
Well, that didn’t take long. Just days after The New York Times’ soft launch of its Chinese-language edition and accompanying microblog accounts, Berkeley-based China Digital Times website reports that the @nytchinese Sina Weibo feed is no longer accessible in China, along with two accounts hosted by Netease and Sohu. We couldn’t pull them up this…
South Africans clash on Twitter over #Zumaspear
South African journalist and arts critic Charl Blignaut made what turned out to be an excellent prediction. “Of all the work on show, it’s this depiction of the president that will set the most tongues wagging and most likely generate some howls of disapproval,” he wrote on May 13 in a review of an art…
Computer crime laws belie Thai claim to modern society
At online discussion sites all over the world, comments are posted on the Web as soon as they are written. People argue, inform, express anger, and voice fears. Some say things in the heat of the moment that they might go on to regret. Others are elliptical and obscure. The enabling of such conversations is…
Sina ‘information credit score’ restricts Weibo users
Sina’s Twitter-like microblog service Weibo has released new guidelines to restrict users who share banned content, according to international news reports. It’s the first time such guidelines target users who adopt puns, homonyms, and other veiled references to discuss censored news stories without using keywords on the propaganda department’s blacklist, the reports said.
Chinese microblog regulates, suspends users–again
Pity those of us who monitor the ups and downs of China’s popular microblog platform, Sina Weibo. For every story its users spread in defiance of local censorship, there follows a clampdown. Whether it’s the latest strike against rumors, or real name registration, or newly banned keywords, there’s always another restriction in the works as…