The censorship of media in China, especially of the internet is something we have been reading of a lot lately. Even in the Olympic press center, the access to certain websites is censored, even though the restriction has partially been lifted, and some traditionally censored websites have been made accessible.
China has discovered the Short Message Service, in a positive as well as in a negative sense: Since it is impossible to control all 850 million cell phones, China tries to produce the impression that there is ubiquitous control. True to the maxim: Big brother is watching you! Thus, in Lhasa many inhabitants received e-mails reminding them to observe the law. The US magazine Newsweek called the new strategy of psychological intimidation ‘Repression 2.0‘. Version 1.0 was more subtle. The fact however that text messages cannot be controlled holds a great potential: In the Chinese city of Xianmen, about one million Chinese protested against the construction of a chemical plant to produce paraxylene, a process that includes the production of highly toxic wastes. The construction has been stopped. A big succes to Xianmen thanks to the short message service.
In the future, we will hear a lot about mobile technology and its potential. It is amazing what is possible with SMS: Barack Obama uses text messages to remind potential voters of the elections, while the Chinese use it for protesting and suppression at the same time. Politics in general seem to use more and more modern forms of information distribution, such as mobile marketing strategies. Thus, it is a just a matter of time until Angie, our German chancellor, will inform us via text message about current issues. After all, we can already download her as a podcast!