2
Internet Filtering: The Politics and Mechanisms
of Control
Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey
It seems hard to believe that a free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit at any time
could matter much to anyone. But just as a bee can fly despite its awkward physiognomy,
Wikipedia has become wildly popular and enormously influential despite its unusual format.
The topics that Wikipedians write about range more broadly than any other encyclopedia
known to humankind. It has more than 4.6 million articles comprising more than a billion
words in two hundred languages.
1 Many Google search queries will lead to a Wikipedia
page among the top search results. Articles in Wikipedia cover the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Dalai Lama, the International Tibet Independence Movement, and the Taiwan independence movement. Appearing both in the English and the Chinese language
versions of Wikipedia—each independently written—these articles have been written to speak
from what Wikipedia calls a ‘‘neutral point of view.’’
2 The Wikipedians’ point of view on some
topics probably does not seem so neutral to the Chinese authorities.
Wikipedia has grown so influential, in fact, that it has attracted the attention of China’s censors at least three times between 2004 and 2006.
3
The blocking and unblocking of Wikipedia in China—as with all other filtering in China, without announcement or acknowledgment—might also be grounded in a fear of the communal,
critical process that Wikipedia represents. The purpose of Wikipedia is ‘‘to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest quality to every single person on the planet
in their own language,’’
4 and the means of creating it is through engagement of the public at
large to contribute what it knows and to debate in earnest where beliefs differ, offering sources
and arguments in quasiacademic style.
While its decentralization creates well-known stability as a network, this decentralization
reflected at the ‘‘content layer’’ for the purpose of ascertaining truth might give rise to radical
instability at the social level in societies that depend on singular, official stories for their legitimacy. Wikipedia makes it possible for anyone to tell one’s own story about what happened—
and, more threateningly to a regime intent on controlling the information environment, to
compare notes with others in a process designed to elicit truth from competing perspectives.
The once stable lock of a regime accustomed to telling its citizenry how things happened—
where states have controlled their media environments for a long time—is threatened.
Internet Filtering: The Politics and Mechanisms
of Control
Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey
It seems hard to believe that a free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit at any time
could matter much to anyone. But just as a bee can fly despite its awkward physiognomy,
Wikipedia has become wildly popular and enormously influential despite its unusual format.
The topics that Wikipedians write about range more broadly than any other encyclopedia
known to humankind. It has more than 4.6 million articles comprising more than a billion
words in two hundred languages.
1 Many Google search queries will lead to a Wikipedia
page among the top search results. Articles in Wikipedia cover the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Dalai Lama, the International Tibet Independence Movement, and the Taiwan independence movement. Appearing both in the English and the Chinese language
versions of Wikipedia—each independently written—these articles have been written to speak
from what Wikipedia calls a ‘‘neutral point of view.’’
2 The Wikipedians’ point of view on some
topics probably does not seem so neutral to the Chinese authorities.
Wikipedia has grown so influential, in fact, that it has attracted the attention of China’s censors at least three times between 2004 and 2006.
3
The blocking and unblocking of Wikipedia in China—as with all other filtering in China, without announcement or acknowledgment—might also be grounded in a fear of the communal,
critical process that Wikipedia represents. The purpose of Wikipedia is ‘‘to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest quality to every single person on the planet
in their own language,’’
4 and the means of creating it is through engagement of the public at
large to contribute what it knows and to debate in earnest where beliefs differ, offering sources
and arguments in quasiacademic style.
While its decentralization creates well-known stability as a network, this decentralization
reflected at the ‘‘content layer’’ for the purpose of ascertaining truth might give rise to radical
instability at the social level in societies that depend on singular, official stories for their legitimacy. Wikipedia makes it possible for anyone to tell one’s own story about what happened—
and, more threateningly to a regime intent on controlling the information environment, to
compare notes with others in a process designed to elicit truth from competing perspectives.
The once stable lock of a regime accustomed to telling its citizenry how things happened—
where states have controlled their media environments for a long time—is threatened.