I plan on filming a documentary discussing the Chinese international students at Emory and the social media websites they use. I got this idea because some American social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and apps such as Line are all blocked in China- something my foreign friends in China have been complaining about all the time. Here's a long shocking list of the webistes that have been censored. These websites had already been blocked ever since I started using the Internet. Thus, people have never had access to them unless they have a VPN or a proxy that they use to bypass the Great Firewall. However, just a few weeks ago, a social movement called "The Umbrella Revolution" took place in Hong Kong. People were posting pictures and using hashtags on Instagram to raise public awareness of the acitivism. As a result of that, Instagram was immediately censored by China's Great Firewall. Unlike the other websites, we first had access to Instagram but it was just censored after a movement. Not only are these social media websites blocked, but search engines such as Google or Yahoo are also ridiculously blocked.
As a result of the censorship, we actually have a few Chinese equivalents of these websites, though we haven't had one to substitute Instagram yet. And most people have never used the American ones because their friends all use the Chinese ones. There's simply no need to purchase a VPN to access Facebook. Therefore, I'm curious about how the Chinese international students here at Emory use both websites and their opinions about the Great Firewall. I'll be interviewing a freshman, a sophomore and a senior at Emory.
As a result of the censorship, we actually have a few Chinese equivalents of these websites, though we haven't had one to substitute Instagram yet. And most people have never used the American ones because their friends all use the Chinese ones. There's simply no need to purchase a VPN to access Facebook. Therefore, I'm curious about how the Chinese international students here at Emory use both websites and their opinions about the Great Firewall. I'll be interviewing a freshman, a sophomore and a senior at Emory.