For this assignment there are going to be 4 Discussion Posts.
For your first post this week, define, summarize, analyze, and evaluate the main ideas in the videos about Morozov and Shirky. Discuss their dystopian and utopian ideas about how the Internet can either strengthen dictatorships or empower civil society and democracy in cyberspace.
In your second post, use Morozov's and Shirky's ideas to discuss and evaluate Min Jiang's essay. Does it take a dystopian or utopian view of the Internet and social media in China? Offer evidence from the article to support your point of view.
For your third and fourth posts, summarize, analyze, and evaluate the main ideas in the articles by Svensson and by Shi and Yang. Do these authors take a dystopian or a utopian view of the Internet and social media in China? Support your point of view with evidence from these articles e.g., quotations, examples, etc.
• Resources:
deLisle, Jacques, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang, eds., The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China. This title is available as an E-book on the Utica College Library homepage. Read all the following sections and chapters, listed below:
Introduction: "The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, " by
Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang, pp. 1-9; p.16: read only the third paragraph that begins "Third, the latest waves....or in other online forums." This paragraph relates to something Shirky discusses in his first video on China's social media; and read Dynamism and Complexity: Ongoing Change, New Challenges, and Regime Responses, pp. 26-27.
Ch. 1: "The Co-Evolution of the Internet, (Un-) Civil Society, and Authoritarianism in China" by Min Jiang, pp. 28-48.
Ch. 2: "Connectivity, Engagement, and Witnessing on China's Weibo," by Marina Svensson, pp. 49-70.
Ch. 3: "New Media Empowerment and State-Society Relations in China," by Zhengzhi Shi and Guobin Yang, pp. 71-85.
Pei, Minxin. China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2008. Conclusion, pp. 205-218.
o Required Videos (total time appx. 87 min.) Use the close caption system for the Morozov videos if you have difficulty understanding them. Note: this system does not translate Russian, Chinese, German, and French into English, but Morozov summarizes those speakers comments.
EvgenyMorozov: How The Internet Strengthens Dictatorships, TED Talk, (min. 11:51).
Documentary, EvgenyMorozov: The End of Cyper-Utopia (49:16 min.) Ai Weiwei is the artist/dissident/blogger who appears in this video around 16:00 min., riding in a car. Also toward the beginning off the video, Morozov mentions "illiberal adaptation," discussed by Minxin Pei in the first few pages of Ch. 2, "Democratizing China?"
Pen America: China's Social Media Censorship Creates Dilemma for Writers (Clay Shirky), (10:17 min.)
How Social Media Can Make History-Clay Shirky, TED-ED Talk, 15:48 min.