Research Journey

I started my research journey with the question, “How has the Internet affected social unrest in China?” I chose to study social stability in China as it relates to new media to incorporate my interest in Political Science and specialization in Chinese politics and history. My initial thoughts were that Internet applications give Chinese people the ability to expose local government corruption, share information and ideas, and organize themselves to protest injustice. Their challenge would be to circumvent the Chinese Communist Party’s infamous Internet censorship and repression of free speech.

The library help days were very helpful and I found many sources through the library databases. Many sources were newspaper articles reporting the Chinese government’s censoring of information relating to Arab Spring protests for fear that Chinese people will be the next to rise up. Other newspaper articles discussed an incident that occurred in July when a bullet train crashed in Wenzhou, killing forty people and causing an online uproar protesting the government’s neglect to monitor the safety of the transportation system. I found peer-reviewed journal articles that supported my initial thoughts that the Internet and especially blogging was an effective outlet for expression. Some articles, however, argued that the Chinese Communist Party has actually embraced the Internet and used it to strengthen its authority. My challenge will be to develop a persuasive claim to counter this argument.

My new claim is that despite the government’s efforts to control the Internet, Chinese citizens have effectively used microblogs to circulate evidence of failures in government. Microblogs allow people to circulate ideas about government corruption and scandals that otherwise would not materialize into public protest. (Microblogs are short messages, like Twitter tweets. Twitter is blocked in China but many people use the websites Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo that are just like Twitter).

Today the coolest thing happened with my research. For my Comparative Government class I’m required to read the NY Times International news and one of the headlines for today was “China Reins in Entertainment and Blogging.” It was an article that talked about the stricter measures that the Chinese Communist Party is taking to limit entertainment and blogging in China, in response to worldwide protests occurring in the Middle East, Europe, and U.S., as well as in response to China’s upcoming leadership transition. This was cool for two reasons: (1) I was killing two birds with one stone, doing my daily current events reading and finding sources for my paper, and (2) I got to see that my topic is relevant to what is happening today.