In these days Google announced that it had stopped censoring search results on its China portal, Google.cn, and was automatically redirecting its users to Google.com.hk, an uncensored portal in Hong Kong. This means that Google won’t cooperate in China’s policy of censoring World Wide Web. Responses to described above around the globe were different but mostly critics have applied to political connotation of the issue. But there is another thing worth considering when re-thinking described problematic. I thing that China, is evidently blocking most popular western sites in order to cement domestic businesses in the market. China has the ability and has used it in the past to block specific sites based on content, and it has blocked specific YouTube and Facebook sites since they went online. Yet only recently have they blocked such sites wholesale. The reason for that is gaining market share against local competitors like Youku. There are now domestic Chinese equivalents of all these “western” sites—Baidu for Google, Taobao for eBay, Renren for Facebook, QQ for instant messaging, games and social networking—and they are doing well (see chart attached).

In Chinese case we can see that all major www companies have their equivalents and are therefore replaceable. This case is also a good proof that global enterprises such as Google in the issues of defining reality as well as in the power of censorship aren’t above national states (at least not in Chinese case). Google’s decision to remove their portal from China to Hong Kong can also be a result of poor management and expected outcome. In China Google pledged to get 24 billion of revenue but so far they succeeded to create only 250 to 600 $ million outcome. Another aspect of transferring their portal to location outside of China is for sure political. Political results of this action are yet to be seen and very interesting to follow and analyze.

New Media and Society

Do new web and mobile technologies influence political agendas and policies?

In a way, we can claim that web and mobile technologies provide people a chance to publish and distribute content, self organize into communities based on common interests or ideas and participate in collective action. New technologies even enable individuals to be a part of deliberative processes which is one step further from rigid representative democracy in which we live in. New web based Medias are opening spheres where people can create new types of media outlets, build new types of civil society organisations, monitor or protest against political institutions. But in reality, is it really so?
Yes we can claim that new types of uncontrolled or less controlled, Medias are fundamentally changing political power structures, but still, there is a certain doubt about still existing censorship, surveillance and on-going propaganda from political elites. Good examples are countries like China where www is monitored and censored. Of course in western countries, development and uprise of new societies occurring and functioning on-line can not be doubted, but do they really posses political power needed for changing and re-shaping policies?

According to dystopian theory, which I find as the one to be considered, new www and mobile Medias are actually enabling traditional institutions to further consolidate their powers. So even though there are several new communities and even institutions emerging on-line, who are opposing or at least monitoring, traditional political institutions, we have to keep in mind that these institutions and people in charge of them have ability to easily excess into new communities, see and analyse their ideas and therefore effectively protect old institutions. So, can new www based communities exceed that and seriously threaten old institutions?