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May 14, 2008
From the Ethical Blogger, a project of Global Policy Innovations, which explores the impact of the Internet and new media on society:
Chinese citizens have been turning to the Internet for information
on loved ones who went missing after an earth quake in Sichuan province
took up to 13,000 lives. Twitter,
the online tool that allows friends and family members to send short
updates to one another via IM, SMS, and social networking sites like
Facebook, has helped many Chinese keep each other up-to-date on their
safety as well as on news related to the quake.
There's been discussion of Twitters becoming more and more popular as a "platform for serious discourse," used by citizen and professional journalists alike. Twitter apparently broke the news about the earthquake before the earthquake tracking agency, U.S. Geological Survey.
But
the influx of information spread via Twitter, as well as YouTube and
various blogs, in some cases may be raising more concerns than it's
quelling. Many Chinese bloggers are questioning why the government wasn't able to predict the quake and help citizens prepare:
Local
media in April noted water suddenly draining from a large pool in Hubei
province, east of Sichuan. That report has been snapped up by bloggers
looking for natural omens.
Other bloggers have unearthed a
statement by a local government bureau in Sichuan, quelling rumours of
an earthquake about a week before Monday's disaster.
Some "conspiracies" floating the blogosphere are that the government may have tried to ignore the earthquake out of a "desire for a peaceful Olympics." According to the UK Telegraph:
[Blogger]
Shanghaiist posted 90 updates to the story, and started a rumour that
the authorities had prior warning of the earthquake which provoked an
official rebuke and more chatter across blogs.
The website
gathered together material as diverse as reports that spy satellite
images of the region were being used in the rescue operation, to the
fact that Monday was Buddha's birthday, to a posting about how people
killed in the earthquake were "victims of China's economic miracle.
Some
have compared the situation to the handling of Hurricane Katrina by New
Orleans and the US government. The situation also looks a lot like the
2003 SARS epidemic, when Chinese citizens spread exaggerated accounts
of the numbers affected by the disease through SMS, sparking widespread
panic and international criticism of the CCP for not better managing
the crisis.
Times Online quotes "established journalist" Chang Ping's reaction to the quake:
"...as someone with relatives in the affected area, I could not stop myself from seeking whatever information I could ...”
He added: "The information was clearly unreliable, and it was difficult to tell what was true or false.
"Together
it all spoke of a single problem, and that is the people's fierce
appetite for information when faced with a public incident."
Most
talk about citizen journalism revolves around whether or not it should
be considered reliable or professional. On the one hand, this type of
panic on the blogosphere could serve to delegitimize the Internet as a
news source. But irresponsible blogging could ironically have just as
much of a positive impact as the citizen journalists uncovering the truth about the
not-always-transparent Chinese government.
WSJ reports that the state-run Xinhua has "proved surprisingly aggressive at covering the earthquake in Sichuan province" to protect the country's reputation now that they have millions of competing accounts being spread through the Internet:
A
regulation promoted as increasing government transparency took effect
just two weeks ago. The regulation urges government officials to
disclose more information to the public, including "information on the
management, usage and distribution of social donations in funds and in
kind for emergency and disaster relief."
At the same time, the
leash has tightened on the country's news media. Just last August, the
government approved a law restricting news outlets in covering natural
disasters. The law says that "units and individuals are prohibited from
fabricating or spreading false information regarding emergencies and
government efforts to cope with emergencies," according to a Xinhua
report at the time.
Though the law was aimed more at relative
muckrakers, Xinhua was affected too. Yet since the earthquake, it has
filed more than 200 reports and updates...
The verdict isn't
clear when it comes to Xinhua's performance in covering the disaster.
"Are they going to ask deeper questions about possible early warnings?"
[David Bandurski, a researcher with the China Media Project at the
University of Hong Kong] says. "We'll wait and see."
May 14, 2008 in Weblogs | Permalink
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Comments
thank God for a little transparency anyway
Posted by: poetryman69 | May 15, 2008 9:55:13 PM
Well said! I hope that the people in the affected area in China....We are helping them.
Posted by: Kelly | May 19, 2008 3:41:32 AM
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