Does the Great Firewall Really Isolate the Chinese? Integrating Access Blockage With Cultural Factors to Explain Web User Behavior

The dominant understanding of Internet censorship posits that blocking access to foreign-based websites creates isolated communities of Internet users. We question this discourse for its assumption that if given access people would use all websites. We develop a conceptual framework that integrates...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Information society 2014-10, Vol.30 (5), p.297-309
Main Authors: Taneja, Harsh, Wu, Angela Xiao
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access
access blockage
Access control
audience duplication
Audiences
Blockage
Blocking
Censorship
China
Chinese culture
Clusters
Communities
Cultural aspects
cultural proximity
culturally defined markets
Discourse
Exact sciences and technology
filtering
Filtering systems
Firewalls
Geography
globalization
Information and communication sciences
Information science. Documentation
Internet
Internet access
Library and information science. General aspects
media choice
Online
Peoples Republic of China
Sciences and techniques of general use
Social Structure
Sociocultural Factors
Studies
User behavior
Web sites
Websites
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Summary:The dominant understanding of Internet censorship posits that blocking access to foreign-based websites creates isolated communities of Internet users. We question this discourse for its assumption that if given access people would use all websites. We develop a conceptual framework that integrates access blockage with social structures to explain Web users' choices, and argue that users visit websites they find culturally proximate and that access blockage matters only when such sites are blocked. We examine the case of China, where online blockage is notoriously comprehensive, and compare Chinese Web usage patterns with those elsewhere. Analyzing audience traffic among the 1000 most visited websites, we find that websites cluster according to language and geography. Chinese websites constitute one cluster, which resembles other such geolinguistic clusters in terms of both its composition and its degree of isolation. Our sociological investigation reveals a greater role of cultural proximity than access blockage in explaining online behaviors.
ISSN:0197-2243
1087-6537
DOI:10.1080/01972243.2014.944728