My research will be aimed at answering the question: What role should virtual social movements play within China 's “Great Firewall”? The issue deals with the fact that there is abundant censorship, not just on the Chinese web, but throughout China in general. Social media has the distinct feature of being a tool that can reach millions of people faster and without nearly as much censorship as other forms of collective action. My argument is that virtual social movements in China, have the ability to effectively exact change at this point in time and should be used to overturn Internet censorship.
To introduce my topic, I can begin with an anecdote about the “Big Yellow Duck” meme, introducing what it was and what it did. I will show the lengths …show more content…
My objective will mainly be to convince the reader of the necessity of using virtual social movements in combating
Internet censorship in China. The sources used as main sources, such as videos and memes are just examples to show what exactly is meant by virtual social movements and how they combat
Internet censorship.
A secondary type of argument that is necessary to make in the context of this paper is that the Internet is an extremely important tool and should not be taken lightly. Mainly, I need to convince the reader that virtual social movements should be taken seriously, and for that to occur, I need to establish the Internet as a credible entity for sparking collective action. Sources that challenge the idea of virtual movements, or in this case that just challenge the idea of the
Internet as an effective tool at all will be refuted through examples of other academic sources as well as the primary sources of memes and videos. I already know of sources that would argue that too much Internet usage leads to some negative consequence, however this is not accurate …show more content…
I can follow this up with theories on how “power” works and what are the major weaknesses to power.
5.) Conclusions
My project in conclusion, deals with the question: what role should virtual social movements play within Internet censorship in China? My goal is to show that collective action on the Internet should be used as a tool to combat censorship. Basically, I argue that they are effective as far as social movements go, and that they are even more effective at this point in time due to the flaws in censoring social media. My initial research question changed as I continued researching through many sources. Originally, I had the question: “How do virtual social movements affect internet censorship in china?” However, as I read through more and more material, I realized that virtual social movements don 't affect Internet censorship all that much, however they do have the power to. Therefore, I flipped my question and gave it a more open ended stance, “What role should virtual social movements play within China 's “Great
To introduce my topic, I can begin with an anecdote about the “Big Yellow Duck” meme, introducing what it was and what it did. I will show the lengths …show more content…
My objective will mainly be to convince the reader of the necessity of using virtual social movements in combating
Internet censorship in China. The sources used as main sources, such as videos and memes are just examples to show what exactly is meant by virtual social movements and how they combat
Internet censorship.
A secondary type of argument that is necessary to make in the context of this paper is that the Internet is an extremely important tool and should not be taken lightly. Mainly, I need to convince the reader that virtual social movements should be taken seriously, and for that to occur, I need to establish the Internet as a credible entity for sparking collective action. Sources that challenge the idea of virtual movements, or in this case that just challenge the idea of the
Internet as an effective tool at all will be refuted through examples of other academic sources as well as the primary sources of memes and videos. I already know of sources that would argue that too much Internet usage leads to some negative consequence, however this is not accurate …show more content…
I can follow this up with theories on how “power” works and what are the major weaknesses to power.
5.) Conclusions
My project in conclusion, deals with the question: what role should virtual social movements play within Internet censorship in China? My goal is to show that collective action on the Internet should be used as a tool to combat censorship. Basically, I argue that they are effective as far as social movements go, and that they are even more effective at this point in time due to the flaws in censoring social media. My initial research question changed as I continued researching through many sources. Originally, I had the question: “How do virtual social movements affect internet censorship in china?” However, as I read through more and more material, I realized that virtual social movements don 't affect Internet censorship all that much, however they do have the power to. Therefore, I flipped my question and gave it a more open ended stance, “What role should virtual social movements play within China 's “Great