Conroy delays his mandatory filters in Australia

i saw a very interesting news in Sydney Morning Herald website last night, which is about the Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy delayed his mandatory filters on internet until next year. The reason of this happened because of widespread concerns and criticism.

The reason why this news can immediately grap my attention because it is tightly relevant to what i am studying now and i also have been hearing this affair for a while, no matter in class or in my spare time. Because i am studying in communication subject and i am also a member of generation Y, we rely on internet to get information and news all the time and this issue had took a role as highlighted issue on social networking sites. In fact, the internet censorship stuff does availably affect a massive range of people in the society. The terms "censorship" or "internet filters" are tightly related to freedom of speech of people, even Australian government said they implemented mandatory filters only for protecting children from internet pornography. But the truth is the faulted filters system did block a lot of innocuous material, which means it was not only limits the people's rights and also would block some important online sources to Australian people.

in the other hand, this current affair also reminded me to think about my own country- China where has serious censorship worse than Australia. For example, before and after 2008 Olympic game, we are not able to access many websites such as facebook, youtube,blogspot because government blocked them. Additionally, we can not type some so-called sensitive words on public networking sits. The results of these censorship is that i had no ideas about what is exactly going in this world before. I only received information and news which government wants me to know and i did not know all aspects about current affairs in the world. I somehow felt defense at the beginning of the time after i went overseas to study because i could not accept another different opinions about my country that suddenly appear in front of me. That's the most terrible part of censorship to me. However, i get used to it now because i know how important to get comprehensive aspects of one thing, which makes me to have critic thinking about happened issues and will never blindly follow only one idea again.

My personal understanding of citizen journalism

In my early memory, the only way to get information and news about national or international affair, was through mainstream media. Such as reading broadsheet newspaper and watching television news program which owned and controlled by government. The interesting thing was most of the followers believed authenticity of these news which transmitted by mainstream media. For example, the most necessary activity that all of my family member would do every night, was to site together and watched evening news of national television channel. In that time, I did not doubt the information I got from it and I did not even know there are some terms occur in the world such as: censorship and propaganda.

However, as the rapid development of internet and electronic technology, anyone in anywhere could write anything about what they see, what they feel and what happen, they take pictures and record video clips and then publish on internet social networking sites to share and also receive feedback from their own audiences. Such as update facebook state with personal or newest story, and write less than 140 words on twitter to talk about current affair in the world. Even uploading video clips of whatever you want to share to public on youtube. The most fascinating thing here is you can share and publish anything without the professional certification of journalism.

Therefore, the summary of my own understanding of citizen journalism is “collecting and reporting news and information by anyone from the members of the public”. Be honest, even though this phenomenon of citizen journalism brings a lot of benefits to society especially it could challenge the mainstream media and government which effectively makes general publics to stop blindly following unilateral information and having critical thinking to distinguish lies and truth. However, the prevalence of citizen journalism also somehow makes confusion of people about the veracity of news because anyone can report without normal reporting process acknowledgement.

yoko

SYD light VIVID/light the sails. had a great time with my friends & sexy opera house