The 2008 Golden Scissors of Cyber-Championship, Clothilde Le Coz

From Week One’s readings, I found the 2008 Golden Scissors of Cyber-Championship by Clothilde Le Coz the most interesting article. I think living in Australia we really take for granted our freedom of information and expression.
I find this reading really emphasises the power of the web and how much of a threat it can be, and the lengths a government will go to have complete control over its citizens, even $7 billion worth in China. I thought it was pretty funny thinking about sitting in an internet cafe in Aust and a policemans head popping up and warning me he's watching what I do.
The writer named Iran the best crackdown and told us how things like YouTube were banned. I thought it was good they way he described the web as a 'vehicle of social expression' for the oppressed in Iran, particularly the women.
It talked about the incident with Yahoo and the Chinese citizen who was jailed after being reported by US Company Yahoo! to the Chinese authorities for having posted "foreign based websites an internal memo sent to his paper by the authorities". I guess foreign relations is more important to the US than some guys freedom?
Then it talked about the censorship in Zimbabwe, how the national telecommunications company TelOne is controlled by the government, and one of the agreements for controlling access to online communications is to "take the necessary steps" to prevent the spread of illegal content on the Net. Imagine taking a stab at Rudd and then being "taken care of". I can't picture it.
Le Coz talks about the incident concerning Reporter Without Borders and Cuba, and how internet access has been limited even further. Theres only one internet cafe available in Havana, and private internet connections are illegal, and jail is a consequence of accessing it.
I just find it so amazing and so hard to imagine the government trying to impose such restrictions on the Australian people. I highly doubt it would ever work.

My thoughts

Citizen journalism, also known as participatory journalism, is the process of citizens actively participating in the collection of news and events. It has grown immensely in the past few years and enables the average citizen to voice their own opinion about absolutely anything.
The creation of blog sites, and also social networking sites such as MSN Instant Messenger, Facebook, You Tube, MySpace and Skype have created a platform for citizen journalism and allowed it to be so much easier for citizens to participate.
My understanding of citizen journalism is that you can contribute information on anything you like from what type of food you feed your pet to information on a possible assassination. It also creates the opportunity to fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog.
New media is also being explored through mobile phones, which have the ability to send photos and send news for a low cost and fast speed.
This is also so important to human rights and freedom of speech which is essential to any country. Citizen journalism provides opportunities to voice the injustices in the world that we would usually not otherwise know about.