Discourse behind the Forbidden Realm: Internet surveillance and its implications on China’s blogosphere

This paper investigates the implications of regulation in China’s blogosphere and the extent to which it impacts bloggers from both a social and a cultural context. There is a growing culture of revelation in China’s blogosphere which is replete with the character of celebrity gossip, personal experience, and self-disclosure. Abundant diary-style blogs and bloggers’ limited interest in politics demonstrate a new cultural phenomenon that obscures the impact of Internet censorship on blogging. However, drawing from theoretical perspectives of Internet censorship, surveillance, and privacy to examine the current trends in China’s blogosphere, this paper illustrates that cyberspace creates the structure of the surveillance environment by implementing technological architectures that mine information about human behavior and preferences. As a result, China’s blogosphere has relatively little value as a medium for organized free speech. A blog is not necessarily a new democratizing vehicle; moreover, concentrated power and sustained inequality in the blogosphere do not overcome governmental regulations.