Apologies for the lack of posts the past week, but I am back.

As the 2500 word essay for my New Media, New Asia subject draws near, I thought I should write a final blog post on it just to get all my ideas and thoughts in-line. When I last wrote up a post about this, my idea was very broad: how the Chinese government tried to censor the Wenzhou train incident, but as the time went by, my mind narrowed down to something more specific; something more… interesting. I want to delve into the psychological side of this issue and focus less on China but on different governments around the world. I want to discuss how the government can so easily transform people’s mindsets (all these mind-games!!).

People in China have habitually started censoring themselves on topics that might get them into hot water, because they do not know when the government will be reading/watching what they post online. I will argue about the possibility in which the government knew this would happen when they brought up censorship in the first place. #conspiracy?

So for this essay, I will bring up:
– general examples arounds the world (one can be the Wenzhou train incident)
– self-censorship
– social media
– a type of political system (in any country)

Quick thoughts:
Why do Japanese people use Twitter more than Facebook?

If you compare Facebook and Twitter, Facebook is a much more vain social media website. Facebook is about the humblebrag (subtly letting others know how amazing your life is – or how amazing you think your life is), whereas Twitter is less “in-your-face”. Maybe because, even though there are more tweets per minute than Facebook posts, this causes the minimal characters to become camouflaged. Twitter lets users self-efface, meaning it allows them to not draw as much attention to themselves; masking yourself. In Japanese culture, one of the major offences is to be ego-centric and self-centered. This could be the main reason why Twitter is more popular in Japan than Facebook is. It may not be a conscious thing that people thought about when deciding which social media to sign up for, but the fact that it has been embedded into their philosophy for hundreds of years, it becomes their natural instinct and a mindset they are immersed in.

In class today we were asked the following questions:

What does anonymity mean to you?
Think about the different types of social medias you use – do you talk to different people on each media?
And how do you represent yourself in each one? Are you different on them compared to how you are in real life?

Everyone has a sense of anonymity whether it be in the online world or in real life. You cannot say you have no anonymity whatsoever – it all depends on the degree of anonymity (this word is so hard to type) you decide to have. And it can be different for each person, taking celebrities as an example, who do not have as much anonymity (as some may like) and it is never one-hundred percent up to them how much they can keep private or how much is shared for the public eye.

Facebook and Instagram are the two social media platforms I use the most.
I use Facebook mostly to talk to my friends and have the occasional scroll through the newsfeed (though this does not interest me as much anymore). I do not upload many photos or post any statuses on this website either – most of the photos I have on my profile are ones my friends have uploaded and I have been tagged in.

Instagram on the other hand is something I have much more control over. Unlike Facebook, where you easily befriend someone you met once at a party, a friend of a friend who you think you may know, or people you’ve had on there for years just because, I am much more particular on Instagram. I follow accounts with photos that interest me (which mainly consist of high quality photos of New York City, architecture in Amsterdam, the streets of London, people living on the other side of the world I like and of course, fashion accounts (both men and women’s) that I like the “looks” of. And with the photos I choose to upload on Instagram, I am also quite picky with them. I don’t post a photo unless it is something that jumps out of my camera roll screaming to be uploaded.

I can easily say that I represent myself on Facebook and Instagram the same way as how I represent myself in real life and I would say that about most of my friends aswell – well on Facebook anyway, because 95% of the people I follow on Instagram, I do not know in real life.

In my New Media, New Asia class, the class was split into two to debate whether censorship is or is not a beneficial thing, especially in Asian countries.

My team won this debate as we successfully argued why strict censorships are wrong.

We were shown this video of a 16-year-old boy named Amos Yee, ranting about why the death of former Singaporean president, Lee Kuan Yew’s death was the best thing to happen to that country and its people. Even though the boy and his video was deemed wrong by the government and he was prosecuted, more than 300,000 people (now even more if you are reading this and decide to watch the video), viewed this on YouTube. It makes you question: would this many people have watched the video if it wasn’t made such a big deal by the Singaporean government in the first place? 

The attempt on censoring this video, gave him even more credibility, and the act becomes almost self-defeating, in a way. If a 16-year-old kid is having these thoughts, then I am sure many more people will be having the same thoughts; if not yet, especially will now after viewing the video rant. In the end, censorship has lead to more problems overall.

Here is the video:

Some arguments that were brought up to why censorship should be fought against is the simple fact that expressing oneself is a universal right!
If the nation if a developing nation, then creating walls to hide the truth is not allowing people to learn and develop. The government is supposed to represent us, the people. If the government, who are meant to be representing our ideas, are preventing us from actually voicing them, then what is the point of having this authority?

We had the freedom to vote for them, yet if they are then forcing ideas down our throats and restricting our thoughts then that takes away the initial freedom we had to make them leaders.

Back to the Singaporean government, freedom of expression appears in their constitution; they’ve signed the charter of human rights that guarantees freedom of expression.
If they weren’t able to follow through on this, then they should not have have signed the documents in the first place, as this makes them less credible as a government – especially in the context of censorship.

You cannot create the social harmony many people are trying so hard to form in the world if there are still so many restrictions on freedom of expression and speech.

If you cannot talk about something, then the problem cannot be fixed.

When the people do not know what the government is doing, then corruption will arise very easily.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.