ILS faculty member Dr. Alice Robbin recently participated in the IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems held July 22-26, 2013 in Prague, Czech Republic. IADIS stands for the International Association for Development of the Information Society.
On Wednesday, July 24, she presented a paper with Xiaoyu Li that received the 2013 Best Paper award for the conference (see abstract below.) The papers presented at the conference represented a 16% acceptance rate. Xiaoyu Li is currently a doctoral student at Wuhan University School of Information Management who is completing his doctoral thesis on the evolution of China’s Internet policies. He was a Visiting Scholar at the School of Library and Information Science between 2010 and 2012 and studied with Dr. Robbin. This paper represents the first of several collaborations that examines the politics and regulation of Internet policy.
Abstract:
How China Regulates Online Content: A Policy Evolution Framework
This paper describes the evolution of China’s online content control (censorship) policies from the mid-1990s through 2011. This paper reports the results of an ongoing research project employing content and citation analysis to examine the implementation of Internet censorship policies promulgated by the Chinese government over nearly two decades. We find that content control in China is not an isolated set of policies, but is situated in a context of Internet regulation and history of media censorship in China. Between 1994 and 2011, the regulatory foci shifted from peripheral control of the Internet infrastructure to direct control of information content and then to indirect control of new online services and the market. The policy paradigm adopted by the Chinese government to regulate the Internet is expected to evolve as more stakeholders participate in Internet activities and the market assumes greater importance to the Chinese economy.
Also, as a part of the ICT, Society and Human Beings 2013, Dr. Robbin chaired the “Life Role and ICT” session on Friday, July 26.
Posted August 21, 2013