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TITLE: Will People’s Voice Vanish? - An Empirical Study of the Impact of
Internet Censorship on Individuals’ Online Political Communication in China
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Submitted to: 2007 NCA Annual Convention, Chicago
EXTENDED ABSTRACT:
With the rapid growth of Internet population in China, Internet is bringing profound
changes to China’s information environment and social system. Internet provides people with
more opportunities to access, send and exchange information, which has potential for
boosting the process of China’s democratization. China’s public Internet services have broke
down the government’s monopoly on information, and made it difficult for the China
Communist Party (CCP) to hoard and control information resources (Kalathil, 2001; Zhao,
2003). From the perspective of the technological determinism, the development of
information technology would impel statism toward western-style democracy (McLuhan,
1994; Levinson, 1999; Castells, 2000).
However, information technology rarely has absolute, unavoidable social consequences,
and the information revolution might not be compatible with democracy (Levinson, 1999;
Huang, 1999; Qiu, 1999). CCP quickly acknowledged the threat of the spread of Internet to
its authoritarianism. CCP hopes that the rapidly increasing population of netizens creates a
new economic wonder in the information era, instead of bringing about greater demand for
democracy. Thus, CCP is constructing a whole Internet control mechanism for Internet use, as
well as using this medium to both extend their reach and push forward national development
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This research project is a part of China’s National Social Science Foundation founded project of
“Cyber Society and Internet Control”, 05•ZD015.
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