Narrative and Authorship Studies 1 (narrative)

This essay aims to explore the narrative construction of classical Hollywood films, which will particularly focus on one specific scene from Ernst Lubitsch’s representative musical comedy, One hour with you (1932). The chosen scene is ‘before the party, Andrew was in the dining room and tried to change the order of place cards but being found by his wife (00:32:14 – 00:34:07).’ Basically it will be analyzed from three aspects: how this scene defines the two characters (Andrew and Colette), how it shows the classical continuity editing method and what is the logical relationship and causality behind it.
Relating to the overall narrative structure of the film, “In the middle of the scene, characters act toward their goals: they struggle, make choices, make appointments, set deadlines, and plan future events” (Bordwell, 20). In the chosen scene, characters are just entering this situation. The appearance of Mitzi and her actions have made everyone’s life full of unstable factors. Due to that, the contradictions hidden behind the marriages of the two couples have been activated and endangering their original lives. Andrew and Colette both have to make decisions which would certainly affect the plot. This is also the common way that classical Hollywood narrative promotes plot development: starting with peaceful romantic love, but then quickly comes to the problems, and characters struggle to make decision, finally the problems are solved with a happy ending.
Regarding to the causality of this scene, it is undoubtedly a turning point of the story. There are many causal lines. For example, Andrew changes the place cards because he wants to keep away from the woman who seduces him. However, it backfires because Colette just saw that and misunderstands the whole thing. Therefore, this accident causes the barrier between their relationship. But why it is unpractical for Andrew to explain? It is still because of the reason that Colette and Mitzi are best friends and Andrew does not expect to see their friendship being destroyed, or maybe he thinks he does not have enough evidence to convince his wife. So generally speaking, the causalities are created by characters’ decisions, and just like those in this scene, they are driving characters to future development.
As a result, the decisions they made not only open up new causal lines for future development of the plot, but also indicate or define who they are. At the start of the chosen scene, Andrew comes into the dining room with formal gown. He close the door gently, a very little action but shows he is careful and does not want to be noticed by anyone. He checks the place cards on the table with a serious face and finds his seat is just next to Mitzi’s. Then, there are some clues to figure out which kind of person Andrew is: he smiles and seems really happy to think the things he could do if sitting next Mitzi. While just before this scene he was trying to refuse Mitzi’s request to come to her house to view her condition because he knows she is seducing him and as a husband who loves his wife, he shall certainly refuse. But as he explains to camera after the party, he is a human who is hesitant and made up of desire. His faith and was shaken, but luckily he shakes his head and seems already made up his mind. He changes Mitzi’s card with Mademoiselle Martel’s, which means he is a loyal and responsible man. Those his actions are small but even significant to the narrative construction because, as mentioned above, it opens up new causal lines. It is because his behavior is just found by his wife, therefore the misunderstanding, which plays a great role in the rest of the film, appears in her mind.
And what kind of woman and wife Colette is according to this scene? As her face shows she is absolutely very unhappy with Andrew’s behavior. She glares at him, whatever he is trying to calm down the situation, she just not listen. At the end of their conversation, she still does not believe his words and even doubts his loyalty. This may suggest she is quite suspicious. And this suspicious also leads her actions later in the film: sticking with Andrew and monitoring him, conflicting with him after seeing Mademoiselle Martel tying his bow tie. Through this short scene, the personalities of the two characters are shown well, and in terms of narrative construction, it successfully defines character and relate to the overall narrative of the film.
Here is another important element in the narrative of the chosen scene: Continuity Editing, which is what classical Hollywood style fundamentally build on. The most successful continuity editing means the cut is invisible to audience, which means no one will notice the transitions when watching the film because it is smooth and fluent. As a very Lubitsch film, it certainly use this system frequently. For example, when change the place card, the editor uses eye match method several time. This is a very common method used in Classical narrative films to make the transition between shots smooth. The general principle is make the person looking at the subject (or person) which will be cut to next, therefore the person as a reference for audience will be helpful to relocate their views. Besides, at the beginning of the scene, it uses fade in to cut to the shot Andrew is walking into the dining room, which is also a common technique of Continuity Editing.
Finally, in the chosen scene, Lubitsch shows his own understanding on classical style films obviously. Although the characters are intensively struggling and making hard choices, audiences do not feel the same emotions but still feel easy during watching. This is because of Lubitsch’s outstanding skill of using funny physical actions and humorous conversation to achieve the effect in his comedies. And in this scene, for example, Andrew defends himself by amusing words. Besides, the background music is not as stressful as the plot, but still relaxing and pleasant. These features are commonly seen in Lubitsch’s classical musical comedies.
In sum, this essay has critically analyzed the classical Hollywood narrative through introducing the specific scene from Lubitsch’s musical comedy One Hour with You. Lubitsch as a master of classical films proved his excellent skills on narrative and character construction. The film One Hour with You is a representative of classical narrative film and great example for cinema studies student to understand the system.

References

Bordwell, D., 1986. Classical Hollywood Cinema : Narrational Principles and Procedures. In: P. Rosen, ed. Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, pp.18-32.

Networked Media 1 (blog)

In general, as you can see, the five chosen blog posts are basically about the progress I made and some thoughts on the Networked Media, also another course I study which is Narrative and Authorship Studies. Through using the blog, I am trying to keep recording my studies, and some good ideas which I might forget if do not write them down. So far, both the educational and personal use of blog have been much clearer for me than ever before.
In this essay, I will focus on few points mentioned below. First, the blog does benefit me by developing a habit of reviewing and sharing opinions with people. But still, I doubt the necessity of using blog as compulsory way to assess students and keep them writing things on it by ‘unless you don’t want to pass’. If the purpose is to make students feel and think the current network culture, there are dozens of ways to achieve. For example, watch documentaries, visit major network companies and analyze representative examples in network media history in class. Of course blog could be one of them, but making it compulsory is unnecessary and not suitable for everyone. Besides, like many others Internet products, it has its certain limitation and weakness which may mislead people or distort truth. However, in my opinion, chasing a person who is not responsible for his words in the Internet is much harder than in reality.
Firstly, what is the specific use of blog in higher education? Why using blog rather than traditional material like books or movies? This is because “Weblogs are easy to setup and administrate in contrast to other technologies, make easier to publish all types of resources (text, images, video, etc.) to the Web when compared to traditional web publishing…Instructor does not need to periodically request the learning logs to the students.” (Luján-Mora & Juana-Espinosa, 2007). Apparently, there is no lack of reason of using blog in higher education. As a modern technology, the purpose (or result you may argue) of inventing it is to offer great conveniences. And compared with the traditional materials like paper and book, it greatly saves lots of time and resource for both teacher and student, which alone could be the reason of its popularity. However, for media students, it is much more than that. Besides the features mentioned above, we shall notice and further explore its nature: the way of communication between tutors and students has been changed. There is no longer the situation that students hand in their homework written on papers and what they will receive after days are just few words as comments and that is it. Now we have blog, which enables all of us as students to post our own opinions, reflections and even suggestions on the course or teaching. Teachers will see them much more directly and give their opinions too by simply comment the blogs. This change caused by blog, in terms of communication, is much more significant than the convenience it brings.
So why I doubt it? As I wrote at the beginning of this essay, I am not arguing against the use of blog in higher education, I am arguing the necessity of making it a compulsory requirement for all the students, making ‘three relevant posts a week’ and ‘must read others blog and give your opinions’ a minimal standard. This rule may be good at pushing students to update their blogs regularly, but it would not help them understand the nature of it. As some of my classmates argued, they are just not the type of person who wants to share his stories and communicating with strangers. Are there any other ways for them to achieve the aim of this course?
Considering the limitation and disadvantages of blog, the first thing might be referred is the misuse of it. Specifically, if there is a person use offensive words in his blog on a particular group, country or race which would be considered as discrimination, what will happen on him? In real world, there are different laws in different countries relating to public discrimination. In America, there is ‘Civil Rights Act of 1964’ which ‘prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal’. So if the person said what he wrote on his blog in public, it is surely illegal in America. But how about in blog? It may be ambiguous because a blog sometime can be considered as both a personal or public place. It very much depends on the circumstance and personal understanding. It is true that everyone should be responsible for his or her words, whatever in reality or the Internet. But it is also inevitable some people do not care the rules, which pretty much thanks to the features of blog: virtuality, easy, and fast.
Back to the blog used in Networked Media, the fact is we are going to continuously use it in the rest of the semester as a part of the assignment. I will try my best to keep writing blogs and reading others as well. Besides, I would not only focus on the material relating to Network Media, but also make the blog more my personal place by adding opinions on the current affairs and the other courses I currently study.

References

Luján-Mora, Sergio; Juana-Espinosa, Susana de, 2007. he Use of Weblogs in Higher Education: Benefits and Barriers. Valencia, IATED, pp. 1-7.

Wright, Susan (2005), The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Landmark Antidiscrimination Legislation, The Rosen Publishing Group, ISBN 1-4042-0455-5.

The French New Wave

Introduction

This essay will address in Clouzot’s claim regarding the French Nouvelle Vague film, and compare the authorship characteristics of Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Demy shown in Une femme est une femme and Les parapluies de Cherbourg. In order to explore the technical competence and creative vision of the two famous directors, two scenes of each film will be specifically analyzed and discussed. Besides, although the focus of this essay is auteur theory, the narrative features of the two chosen films will also be mentioned for the reason that the narrative, as an essential element of a film, is also largely affected by the author’s personal style and aesthetics.

 

‘Just as one recognizes the vintage of a great wine by its body, color, and scent, one recognizes a nouvelle vague film by its style’ (Neupert, 2007). The importance of authorship in French new wave films studies is emphasized by a vivid metaphors. According to Andrew Sarris’ Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962, the authorship can be concluded as threes premises: director’s technical competence, personal style (personality), and interior meaning (Sarris, 1962). Therefore, this essay will explore the authorship features through illustrating the stylistic techniques, personalities and implied thinking of the two directors.

Une femme est une femme

What is Une femme est une femme? The answer cloud not be simpler: it is a film, and specifically, a comedy musical. This seems to be a clear enough answer for an audience. However, in cinema studies, there are much more complicated and various interoperations on this innovative work which is strongly featured by the director’s personal style and creative vision. “I thought of the subject [of Une femme est une femme] while thinking about a musical neo-realism. It is an absolute contradiction, but it is precisely that which interests me in the film” marked by Godard in a 1962 interview (Godard, 1998). There are two things worth noting in his comments: neo-realism and contradiction. Firstly, this film is a typical French new wave film, not only because of the director’s techniques, personal style and interior meaning, but also the theme, which reflects on realistic issue rather than romantic love or hero story. Secondly, the contradiction mentioned by Godard is significant because Une femme est une femme can be regarded as experiment of founding a new genre of comedy musical or at least a trying of a new form of film. With an understanding of these two points, the question of what the film is and how it works will be much easier to answer.

 

One reason of discussing narrative features in this authorship-focused essay is that especially in French new wave films, the director plays significant roles on narrative construction, and his or her personal style directly affects how the story is told and what it feels like. For example, in Une femme est une femme, the overall narrative is ambiguous. If there has to be a story line, it would be a woman wants a child, but her boyfriend does not, that is all of it. The film does not have a strong narrative, a climax or even a most impressive moment like a classical Hollywood or French film usually has. The rapid changes of scenes and character’s improvised conversations even show no attempt to tell a literary story at all. Godard, as the auteur, made the story exactly like the common life of the young people living in that age, which is usually confused, worried and disappointed. The problem of two-person world or having child between Angela and Emile is the problem exists in real life, not romantic stories. This is why when audiences sit in cinema, they do not feel watching a film but watching a real, while maybe slightly exaggerated, life. In fact, the reason that Godard likes to break narrative conventions can be found in his opinion on classical narrative, which he described as ‘oppressive and deterministic aesthetic of plot’ (Sfetcu, 2014).

 

There is a scene which perfectly shows the contradiction mentioned by Godard himself, where Angela and Emile is arguing about having child first time in their apartment. Angela said, before we start, we should greet the audience, and then they both look at and smile to camera. This certainly reminds audience of a master of classical musical comedy, Ernst Lubitsch, who has used this technique in his representative film One Hour with You. Lubitsch used this technique to indicate and emphasize the character’s inner life, with his ‘Lubitsch touch’, which is usually related to elegance, subtlety and charm. However, although the same way of using camera and actors, it feels and looks completely different in Godard’s hand. It does not show character’s inner life with an elegant manner, but makes audience confused with the sudden, abrupt, and confusing actions taken by the characters. And later in the same scene, there is another classical stylistic feature that Godard ‘learned’ from the elder generation: after quarrel, they both keep silence, a white French title just fades in, saying they think they are mature enough to overcome the current problems between them. This is a typical technique of showing character’s feelings and explain the plot for audience in silent films. But apparently, Godard did not aim to use this old fashion to make up the technical limits. It seems he just causally made it, without any technical or meaningful reason. According to the rules of continuity editing, or any other conventions of making a film, these two shots should not exist in this scene, and in the same film together. But Godard made it anyway by his own understanding of art cinema. In the name of paying homage to the Hollywood classical musical comedies, he deliberately mixed up those old fashions together, ignored the rules of using them, and made them feel and look extremely uncomfortable with each other. In the name of a neo-realism musical comedy, what he was really seeking to achieve is a brand new genre, which learnt from the features of old films, made of the techniques of former directors, but eventually became a product which overthrew the old film industry.

 

Besides remaking the old features by his unique style, Godard’s characteristics as a auteur is also known by completely destructing traditional film-making with his revolutionary editing and shooting techniques. Film critics were already impressed by the rapid change of scenes, planless moving of camera and intercutting of unrelated scenes in Breathless, and this time he used them again. For example, when Angela is talking with one of her friend about the future prospects of her job, the camera does not focus on them, but however move to the sidewalk, which has no logical connection with the conversation at all. Is there any implied meaning of this shot? Maybe only the director himself knows it, but spending too much time on guessing every single shot is certainly not what Godard wanted. And the music, which suddenly starts and ends all the times, is also an example of his unique editing technique. Another key feature is intercutting of unrelated scenes, for example, when Angela claims she will find a man who would like to have child with her, two policemen came to the apartment, and then gone after inspecting. They are not related to the plot at all, but Godard takes over a minute to show them. All of these are actually trying to remind audiences that what you are watching is not somebody’s life, is just a film, which consists of moving sounds and pictures, no matter how you present them.

 

Les parapluies de Cherbourg

It seems the only thing that the two films have in common is they are both directed by French director, and released in 1960s. They are of course different wines according to Clouzot, and the best way to taste them is to find their differences, and recognize that the director is the person who creates the diversity. Demy and Godard are both active in the age of French new wave, and they both challenged the classical musical to different extent. Godard intended to achieve a total destruction on classical Hollywood musical, and the stylistic techniques he used are effective on this point. However, despites those innovative techniques, Les parapluies de Cherbourg does pay homage to classical Hollywood musicals. For example, the theme is romantic love between young man and woman. But on the other hand, the love story between Guy and Geneviève is not a comedy at all. Demy shown a new genre of musical film which differs from classical Hollywood musical comedy that aims to make audience laugh and relax, but intends to offer an experience of the reality of adolescent love.

 

The first impressive place in this film is the opening scene, a bird-eye shot of the pedestrians walking on the street in a rainy day. The colorful umbrellas draw a beautiful picture of a small French town, the place where the story happened. There is only one single shot at the beginning, but it does not make audiences feel the credits is too long because of Dmey’s special techniques of catching attentions. And at the end of the film, Demy and his family are playing snow in front of the gas station, at the same time camera is moving up above them, which is perfectly correlated to the beginning.

 

The whole story is coherent. Unlike Une femme est une femme, there is no extra unnecessary shots of unrelated characters in this film. There is also no surprise in the narrative construction, every character is acting according to their wills, and those wills are clearly indicated by their dialogs, precisely, singings. Shots are edited chronologically and logically, and in order to avoid possible confusions, Demy even add title of time at the beginning of each scene. The transitions between scenes are usually straight cuts. However, after the scene that Guy and Geneviève hug each other on the street, it directly turns to the next scene in a café. In order to make the transition smoother, Demy made the characters and camera keep the exactly same gesture and location. At this point, Demy is just the opposite of Godard. In contrast, his style of delivering scenes is more like a common touch, which the interior meaning of the film can be easily understood by viewers. Apparently, there is a strong attempt of telling a complete story, and the director seeks to make audiences engage in the world he created, feel the emotions of the characters.

 

Another notable feature in the film is the color and lighting. In the scene that Geneviève is found pregnant by her mother, the massive use of exaggeratedly bright color is remarkable. The two characters are wearing red, the wallpaper is purple and pink, and the whole shop is decorated like a palace rather than an umbrella shop. This is an ingenious arrangement, because its visual effect on audience is opposite with the mood of the characters. Usually in a scene that the character is so disappointed, the color and light should be dark as well to match his or her emotion. From the creative uses of lighting, custom and camera movement, people can see Demy’s skills and high vale he puts on mise-en-scene. By contrast, Godard pay little or even no attention on mise-en-scene stuff. His films seem to be causally formed by without prepared scripts.

 

Conclusion

1960s is the time that society is changing significantly. Different ideas of politics, economy, and culture caused conflicts. And like the way of living was changed, the film industry in France was also transformed by a new generation of directors like Godard and Demy. They putted new blood into the notion of film, and the revolution they started soon spread to the whole rest of world. Nowadays when people talking about authorship, no matter they agree or disagree with the idea, it is a recognition of their profound creativity and contribution to the film industry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Godard, J.-L. (1998). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard. (A. Bergala , Ed.) Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma.

Neupert, R. (2007). A History of the French New Wave Cinema. London: Univ of Wisconsin Press.

Sarris, A. (1962). Notes on auteur therory in 1962. The film artist, 561.

Sfetcu, N. (2014). The Art of Movies. Nicolae Sfetcu.

 

The Great Firewall of China

 

Introduction

 

This essay aims to discuss the issue of censorship of networked media in China, and focus on one specific case – the Great Firewall of China vs online media and communities. The questions like ‘How and why the Chinese government uses it to control Internet’, ‘What are the problems and struggles behind the system?’ and ‘How do the Chinese people react to this’ will be critically analyzed with examples like the blocking of access to Google, Facebook and Twitter.

 

What is the Great Firewall of China?

The Great Firewall of China, which officially named as the Golden Shield Project (Norris, 2010), is operated by the Ministry of Public Security division of the government of China. The purpose of creating this system is to block the content which the government thinks could be harmful, like ‘superstitious beliefs, spreads rumors, threatens national unity or encourages gatherings disturbing social order’ (Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa, 2006). Generally, the content which might threaten, or potentially challenge the current one-party political system will be blocked or filtered. As a result, foreign social media community like Facebook, news media like BBC and CNN’s websites certainly became the targets of this system. Without VPNs, Chinese people cannot receive uncensored information from Internet.

 

The history of Golden Shield Project is not long, which just started to operate since 2003, but there are enough notable events happened during the decade. For example, Google is not the only foreign major company disagreed with the Chinese censorship, but it might be the first one to challenge the system. In 2006, a Google.cn search page with the censored results according to the regulation of Chinese government was launched by Google China. It can be interpreted as a compromise that Google climbed over the Great Firewall to explore the Chinese market, because without communication or some agreement with the authority, this was unlikely to happen. However, this situation did not last for long time. Google finally removed all its services in China, and redirected search queries from Google.cn to Google.com.hk (Hong Kong), which does not censor the results claimed as harmful and illegal by the central government. David Drummond, senior vice president of Google, then explained they made this decision in response to ‘a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China’ which usually known as Operation Aurora and ‘(attempts to) further limit free speech on the web in China’, such as the block of YouTube and Facebook (Drummond, 2010). On March 30, 2010, all the Google services in Mainland China were blocked again, any attempts of accessing will lead to DNS errors (Hoffman, 2013). Google is outside the wall again for the Chinese, exactly same as BBC, CNN and Twitter which were already intercepted by the Gold Shield project due to the political reasons.

 

Why did Chinese government create the shield?

The reason of creating this censorship system might be complicated, but the result is apparent – without the free connection to international network communities and media, the Chinese teenagers seem to be isolated from the rest of world. China is engaging in the international society and rising her power with incredible economic development, but the gap between her and Western world still exists, thanks to the tight censorship and regulation of Internet, TV, films and even print industry. Being aware of these outcomes, the Central Chinese Government seems not to intend to release its control of Internet, like it is a very fundamental principle of its ruling. But in fact, is the one-party system always incompatible with the freedom of speech? Or the Communist Party of China is just not willing to find a solution?

 

“The Chinese Communist Party is just more cunning about how it controls public opinion.” said by Former CFR Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow Matt Pottinger (Xu, 2014). In fact, the Chinese authorities never deny their excellent skills of controlling public opinions, because for them, it is not something violates human rights or shameful, but a common and fundamental function of the government of a great power. While people criticizing the censorship system in China, a question is usually forgotten: If Chinese leaders should feel guilty for controlling public opinions (or lead the people according to their interpretation), how could other countries in the world, like America, refuse to admit the propagandas they used in cold war are not a sort of public mind controlling?

 

Certainly some will argue that although controlling public opinions is inevitable, it could not be considered as a sound reason for the censorship of Internet, which does violate the freedom of speech and people’s right to know. So what reason makes the central government such sensitive and stubborn about the censorship issue? As mentioned above, freedom of speech and one-party system might not be necessarily incompatible with each other. However, thinking on the government’s stance, is there any chance when all the blocked results, websites are suddenly released, and there is no increasing attempt to overthrow the current government, which might cause massive and long-lasting chaos? Besides, according to the report written by Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, content which refer to Tibet independence, Taiwan independence are often censored by the system. The historical and political reasons already putted so much tension on the relation between the central government and Taiwan, Tibet. If the Golden Shield project shuts down, it will undoubtedly be the best gift ever for the separatists, even the terrorists and radicals.

 

The community under the shield

Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, is the country’s biggest microblog service with over 300,000,000 registered users (Hewitt, 2012). Since started in 2009, its impact on Chinese society is always a popular topic for foreign media workers, political researchers and even the Chinese authorities to evaluate. There were also opinions that when the authorities realize the power of Weibo, it is not far from its end. However, while paying attentions on improving the censorship system’s ability of filtering the key words on Weibo, the government departments, official media and institutions are competing with each other to register account on Weibo, and to show their welcomes. “We welcome people to take part in the debate,” says Chen Cheng, who runs an official microblog for the city of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province (Hewitt, 2012).

 

Now the reason of blocking Facebook, Twitter is much clear. What the Chinese authorities seek is a free, but most importantly, controllable place which they can receive feedbacks of people rather than facing protest. There are criticism on local government’s policies that central government would notice and take actions if they think it is against the central policies. Therefore, Weibo could survive under the Golden Shield. Twitter and Facebook, those who refuse the self-censor system, are refused by Chinese market.

 

However, the situation is not always what the authorities wish to see. The key words are replaced by others which are not included yet in the censorship system sometimes cause negative effects on the government’s figure. And from the harsh comments which survived, the authorities see the people’s wrath. For example, on February 9th, 2013, Chinese New Year’s Eve night, Fang Binxin, who is the father of the Great Firewall system, whished his followers on Weibo happy new year. However, he receive thousands of comments like ‘get lost’ as the wishes of a new year (The Economist, 2013). Thanks to his contribution, the sensitive words system was created and used for the Great Firewall, and apparently the Chinese people are aware of this.

 

Conclusion

Rather than saying the Great Firewall is a single case of media, Internet censorship, it is more reasonable to consider it as a reflection of the increasing imbalance of economic and cultural development of China since the 1978 reform and opening up. The gap is as real as the CPC’s worries of its legitimacy doubted by democratic ideology and ability of controlling public opinions from separatists and anti-communists. There is still no clear intention of releasing the blocked foreign websites. However, the question now becomes whether the experiment of Chinese characteristic online community supervisor mode is effective and long-lasting as the authorities expect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Drummond, D. (2010, March 22). A new approach to China: an update. Retrieved from Google Offical Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html

Hewitt, D. (2012, july 16). Weibo brings change to China. Retrieved from BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18773111

Hoffman, C. (2013, February 5). HTG Explains: How the Great Firewall of China Works. Retrieved from How-to Geek: http://www.howtogeek.com/162092/htg-explains-how-the-great-firewall-of-china-works/

Norris, P. (Ed.). (2010). Public Sentinel: News Media & Governance Reform. Washington: World Bank Publications.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa. (2006, March 20). China: Internet censorship, including state regulations, technical control, enforcement, and methods used to avoid censorship (2005-2006). Retrieved from Refworld: http://www.refworld.org/docid/45f1470820.html

The Economist. (2013, April 6). The art of concealment. Retrieved from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21574631-chinese-screening-online-material-abroad-becoming-ever-more-sophisticated

Xu, B. (2014, September 25). Media Censorship in China. Retrieved from Council on Foreign Relations: http://www.cfr.org/china/media-censorship-china/p11515