Rebecca MacKinnon
Rebecca MacKinnon
Rebecca MacKinnonis an author, researcher, Internet freedom advocate, and co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices Online. She is notable as a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. She is on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth16 September 1969
CountryUnited States of America
Rebecca MacKinnon quotes about
Each of us has a vital role to play in building a world in which the government and technology serve the world's people and not the other way around.
The Egyptian Revolution makes it clear, if anybody was in doubt, that digital technologies are going to play a powerful role in the future of global politics.
The Chinese government sometimes shuts down the Internet and mobile services in specific areas where unrest occurs.
So long as confusion reigns, there will be no successful global Internet agenda, only contradiction.
Over time, if you want rights, you have to also show that you can use them responsibly and that you can build a positive world in the online space, and that's also very important.
Thanks to the Internet in general and social media in particular, the Chinese people now have a mechanism to hold authorities accountable for wrongdoing - at least sometimes - without any actual political or legal reforms having taken place. Major political power struggles and scandals are no longer kept within elite circles.
It's a tough problem that a company faces once they branch out beyond one set of offices in California into that big bad world out there.
Almost every week, there are stories in the press or on Chinese social media about what even the official Chinese media call 'hot online topics:' stories about how people in a particular village or town used Weibo to expose malfeasance by local or regional authorities.
I think one of the problems I think with a lot of people in high school is that people don't think of the Internet as a real place or a place that has physical consequences in the physical world. This happens with adults who ought to know better, too.
In Russia, they do not generally block the Internet and directly censor websites.
The Chinese government clearly does pay attention to public opinion expressed on the Internet - the extent to which they choose to adapt their practices based on it, or ignore it, seems to vary.
As a citizen of a community, if you never vote or engage, don't be surprised when the outcome doesn't serve your interests; you've never done anything to push things in the right direction.
The relationship between citizens and government is increasingly mediated through the Internet.
China's censorship and propaganda systems may be complex and multilayered, but they are obviously not well coordinated.