So sad I wasn’t able to attend Theorizing the Web’s annual conference this year, so I figured I’d post my 2014 presentation about the many challenges of figuring out what exactly is censorship in China as well as how important companies are for mediating the negotiation over acceptable sensitive material online. I’ve previously uploaded it as a slidedeck and have a more detailed report posted on the Citizen Lab’s blog (I also presented versions of this talk at AAS 2014 and WikiConference USA), but I figured it might be easiest to share it here in a single, readable blog post.

(Note: all findings accurate as of April 25, 2014, all data accurate as of August 2013 except where noted.)

Hi, my name is Jason Q. Ng and I primarily research Internet censorship and the effects it has on netizens and tech companies. Obviously, much of this sort of work centers on China, where a lot of the most “interesting” online censorship is taking place today.

So I’ll be sharing with you the results from a project on Chinese online encyclopedias that I worked on last summer. Hopefully it’ll not only add to the data we have on Chinese censorship, but it’ll also contribute to the conversation about how hard it can be to pinpoint when “censorship” is taking place, especially when it is as decentralized as it is on these encyclopedias. This project will hopefully also touch on the ways which Chinese netizens are still able to create and share content despite restrictions imposed on them, as well as the fluid boundaries that authorities place on sensitive discussions.

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