Soong_Roland---Internet, Tibet, the Olimpics and the Earthquake

Internet, Tibet, the Olympics and the Earthquake Roland Soong 6th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference Hong Kong June 14, 2008

What About 2008?
What happened on the Chinese Internet in 2008?
Myths: Snow Storms,Tibet, Olympics and Earthquake
I’m not a historian and I cannot tell you what the histories shall say
I’ll only tell you what I observed via the EastSouthWestNorth blog

Greatest ESWN ‘Hits’ of 2008 by Month

Greatest ESWN ‘Hits’ of 2008 By Day Sexy Photos Gate Olympics Wenchuan Earthquake

Four Landmark Events
Sexy Photos
Tibet (Lhasa incident; Anti-CNN.com)
Olympics (torch relay; Carrefour boycott)
Wenchuan Earthquake

Sexy Photos Gate
January 28, 2008
Hong Kong's Biggest News Story of the Year “ The discussion forum servers are being overwhelmed today by the massive traffic surge in pursuit of this news story. Forum posts are being deleted as quickly as they are posted …”

Sexy Photos Gate

Sexy Photos Gate
So what? All that happened in Hong Kong with “one country, two systems.”
What has that go to do with mainland China?

Sexy Photos Gate
Hong Kong police cracked down on the Edison Chen photos
If you post the photos onto Hong Kong adult forums, the police will force the forums/ISPs to yield your IP/real addresses and arrest you
Even if you post the photos onto overseas websites and then post links on Hong Kong adult forums, the police will arrest you too

Sexy Photos Gate
If you can’t post to Hong Kong forums, you post to the mainland forums such as Tianya, Baidu, Xici Hutong, etc.
This was where the ESWN traffic surge was coming from! I translated Hong Kong reports into English and then they back-translated them back into Chinese! And they hotlinked to my news photos!
For the first time ever, mainland China proved to more less ‘repressive’ than Hong Kong.

Tibet
On March 14, 2008, Lhasa was burning …

Tibet
James Miles ( The Economist ) was the sole foreign correspondent reporting from Tibet
Foreign bloggers (e.g. Kadfly)
Chinese bloggers too (e.g. Phoenix TV’s Chen Lin)
CCTV/Xinhua were sole information provider otherwise, leading to conflict of views between China and western media

Tibet
The media angle in AFP/CNN photo:

Tibet
Anti-CNN.com was spontaneously established as netizen reaction of western media bias to act as self-appointed monitor

Olympics Torch Relay
The Olympic Torch Tour As Public Relations
“ There is a public relations disaster, but the question is for whom? … Faced with the beautiful heroine with one leg, how is any liberal dissidence on behalf of a Free Tibet going to work inside China? … That would guarantee that those causes will never become accepted into mainstream Chinese opinion for the next generation.”

Olympics Torch Relay
Carrefour Boycott: Spontaneously organized?
France -> LV -> Carrefour

Wenchuan Earthquake
May 12, 2008

Wenchuan Earthquake
Everything else is off the table for now:
Free Tibet
Olympics Boycott
Darfur
Human rights
…
New modes of civic action/reaction through the Internet

Reality
Chinese netizens are heterogeneous and constantly changing
Size matters because 0.01% of 210 million Chinese netizens is 21,000
External events are change agents, especially so far in 2008
Plenty more to come still …

Soong_Roland---Internet, Tibet, the Olimpics and the Earthquake

by Chinese Internet Research Conference on Jun 22, 2008

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