Chinese Censorship A4

1. uss yorktown nt

2. google china censorship

3. Tiananmen Square

4. Taiwan independence

What do these terms mean to you, do you have a pre-determined conception of them? Like most of us these are familiar terms but lets explore why. As part of a classroom assignment I was asked to seek information from several different search engines in the US and China to see how they would report based on specific keyword strings of information. I was looking to see how the information I was seeking would be portrayed with the thought of censorship in mind. I searched google.com, google.cn, bing.com, and baidu.com.

When I searched for USS Yorktown I found numerous references to current day information about the newest Navy ship commissioned in 1982, I found some information about the USS Yorktown of WWII. And one reference to the USS Yorktown on “bing.com” (http://www.slideshare.net/kapitan/aircraft-carrier-cv-1-presentation) that described a revolutionary battle led by “General George Washington” but no clarifying referent was found to explain why it was so listed. Turns out the USS Yorktown was named after this famous battle of 1781 in Yorktown Virginia. On google.cn I went 3 pages in before I found any references besides the windows NT failure, and this was regarding a gun club event title “Remember the Yorktown” (http://www.twincitiesidpa.com/results/2008%20Season/2008-06-07.pdf) . The next page again showed just info about the NT failure.

On the google.cn site, listed information was mostly regarding the NT failure and the occasional odd bit of information that did not translate to an english equivalent that made sense.

I searched Tiananmen Square on baidu.com and google.cn, I found nice stories about the square and the importance of this cultural location, I did not find anything relating to modern day protest movements. Just about Mao Zedong revolution, most of the information was in a very positive slant, Mostly about how great it is in China, how happy the people are who live there, things about “pop” culture, short stories, I did not find any real news items that truly touched on real life issues or modern day social concerns. When I went to google.com and bing.com, I found that all of the primary pages discussed the violence perpetrated in the square, listing casualties, the issues and concerns that brought the individuals there to protest the current regime in power, and descriptive stories about the the square and it cultural importance to the Chinese people.

Next I searched the term “China Censorship” I found the topic vetted on each search engine but it was more predictably slanted by the search engines in support of the idea of countries dictating content management if they conducted a lot of business with China vs. Those who had some problem, ie. Microsoft and Google. And the people who blogged regarding individual freedom to make their own informed choices.

The last item I searched was the most blatantly propagandized by the Chinese search engines. I was unable to find a single reference to the violence at the square that is so historical around the world today. I did find that the western based search engines almost exclusively presenting content regarding the cultural protests against the current socialist regime.

In conclusion, I find that the degree of censorship is directly related to modern marketing usage. The Chinese search engines only allowed topics of discussion where they could control the slant without seeming to avoid the subject in terms of the politically inflammatory items. When there was a more palatable context this was used to the exclusion of all other information. This allowed the impression of being informed without providing any knowledge of widespread disaffection with their viewpoints politically.