Mediaboss Marketing

As the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics comes to a close, human rights activists, politicians, and scholars of authoritarian influence find themselves faced with lingering questions. Was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) successful in leveraging the Games to burnish its image and discourse power on the global stage? Did a series of diplomatic boycotts prompted by Chinese authorities human rights abuses make a difference? After a successfully executed Games, will China be further emboldened to extend its surveillance and censorship regime beyond its borders? To help bring potential answers to these questions into context, were featuring some of the most relevant reporting and analysis published by news outlets and research institutions throughout the duration of the Olympic Games.

The Winter Olympics were held, again, in an authoritarian state, raising questions for human rights groups and many American corporations. PBS NewsHours Nick Schifrin reported on what advocates said about Chinas exploitation of the Games, as it tried to project the carefully crafted image its leader wants the world to see.

The Chinese government has a history of forcing people to make all sorts of propaganda videos and covering up what they have been doing to the people. Jewher Ilham, Uyghur Activist

Fourteen years after China first hosted the Olympics, an event often described as a pivotal moment for the countrys political trajectory, Beijing hosted the Games again. This time, they occurred during a surging pandemic, a new wave of lockdowns, multiple diplomatic boycotts, and international alarm at the disappearance of one of the countrys top athletes. ChinaFile asked leading China experts, including NED senior program officer Akram Keram, what the Beijing Games meant this year and to what extent they marked a significant juncture in Chinas relations with the world.

As Beijings abuses deepen and as Xi Jinping seeks to assert the Chinese governments power and influence beyond the countrys borders, some governments have demonstrated that they recognize the Chinese Communist Party as an ambitious force aspiring to remake the world in a manner more friendly to itselfand less friendly to human rights and democracy. Maya Wang, Human Rights Watch

Why boycott the Beijing Olympics? What could boycotts look like? Would China retaliate? Lindsay Maizland considered these questions ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as human rights groups and some politicians in Western nations pressured countries to boycott the Games over the CCPs human rights abuses.

Boycotts have impacts in a variety of ways that are almost always indirect, almost always over a relatively extended period of time, and sometimes counterproductive. David Black, Dalhousie University

Over the course of a 12-month period, countries such as China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom have been criticized for human rights violations, will use prestigious sports events to polish their public image on an international stage. While sportswashing has long been a popular tactic, 2022 is a particularly concerning year because both the Olympic Games in China and the World Cup in Qatarthe two most-watched sporting events in the worldare being hosted in countries with markedly oppressive regimes.

This strategy has proven to be remarkably effective in overhauling these states public images and legitimizing their regimes. Karim Zidan, the Guardian

China analyst Sarah Cook identified five types of potential restrictions before, during, and after the Olympic Games: surveillance of athletes and journalists, reprisals for political speech and independent reporting, rapid censorship of scandals, stonewalling foreign journalists, and repercussions after the closing ceremony.

Chinas leaders might feel compelled to quickly suppress any number of unfavorable news stories, such as revelations that Olympic attire was produced with Uyghur forced labor, athlete complaints about an Olympic venue, or unsportsmanlike conduct by a favored Chinese athlete. Sarah Cook, Freedom House

Bonus: Beijings expanding efforts to shape global narratives go beyond simply telling Chinas story. Sarah Cook documented how the CCP leverages propaganda, censorship, and influence over key nodes in the information flow to shape media content around the world, and how nongovernmental actors are countering this influence while protecting democratic institutions. Read the International Forum for Democratic Studies report in English or Spanish.

Automated pro-China accounts flooded Twitter with spam-like tweets using #GenocideGames. The hashtag had initially been used by activists and Western lawmakers to raise awareness about human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Researchers said the tactic, known as hashtag flooding, was used to dilute the hashtags power to galvanize criticism of the Winter Olympics host nation.

The Chinese propaganda apparatus has been very focused on defending their image regarding the treatment of the Uyghur, while also promoting the Olympics. This hashtag is at the nexus of those two things. Darren Linvill, Clemson University

During a wide-ranging Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by Politico ahead of the Opening Ceremony, a panel of experts weighed in on Beijings unprecedented, closed loop covid mitigation system, international concern over Chinas human rights record, threats to the safety and data privacy of competing athletes, and the perceived deaf ear of the International Olympic Committee and the Games corporate sponsors to these concerns.

The idea that the Games are apolitical is laughable. And yet that same justification is used to silence athletes [and] put in place rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter, which says that any political demonstration on the field of play or on the podium will be punished by the International Olympic Committee. [This] is used to facilitate the use . . . of athletes as pawns because if athletes cant speak up, theyre easier to use in whatever way you find advantageous. Noah Hoffman, Global Athlete

Bonus: For China, a Uyghur lighting the Olympic cauldron was a feel-good moment of ethnic unity. But to human rights activists and Western critics, it looked like Beijing was using an athlete (who later avoided foreign media) in a calculated, provocative fashion to whitewash its suppression of Uyghurs in the region of Xinjiang. Read more in the New York Times.

The extraordinary foreign commercial relationships that open societies have forged with authoritarian countries have enabled new channels for authoritarian control to limit expression in democratic societies. Facing pressure from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian regimes that leverage both political and economic incentives to induce censorship, private sector firms (including some sponsors of the Olympic Games) have walked back statements, altered their content, or altogether avoided topics that could be considered politically sensitive.

For foreign companies facing the prospects of official reprimand, legal troubles, consumer backlash, and financial risk, compliance with authoritarian censorship demands can sometimes outweigh the reputational benefits of enabling free speech and generating products that facilitate creative expression. Rachelle Faust, International Forum for Democratic Studies

There are many overlapping parts of Chinas security state, from media censorship and monitoring of online discussion to surveillance and control of dissident figures. China also employs methods of voice and image analysis developed by technology firms and a massive network of low-level volunteer informants on the lookout for suspicious or criminal activity. How much of Chinas surveillance apparatus would be targeted at Olympic athletes was hard to know. But the countrys intensifying domestic controls, brazen arrests of foreign nationals, and harassment of activists and journalists gave Western governments reason for concern.

The national security prism is now inescapable, especially for the lengthening list of groupsUyghurs, Tibetans, rights lawyers, feminists and foreign journalists, to name a fewconsidered inherently a danger to party control. Christian Shepherd, Washington Post

Bonus: China isnt just upgrading its domestic surveillance state; its exporting the technologies it uses to monitor its populace and control society at home. Samantha Hoffman describes how the PRC leverages emerging technologies and an active role in international standards-setting bodies to undercut democracies stability and legitimacy while expanding its own influence. Read the International Forum for Democratic Studies report in English and Spanish.

MY2022 () is a multi-purpose app required to be installed by all attendees to the 2022 Olympic Games, including audience members, members of the press, and athletes. An analysis of the app conducted by the Citizen Lab found security deficits that potentially violated not only Googles Unwanted Software Policy and Apples App Store guidelines, but also Chinas own laws and national standards pertaining to privacy protection. MY2022 also included features allowing users to report politically sensitive content and a censorship keyword list that, while inactive at the time of the analysis, targeted a variety of political topics such as Xinjiang and Tibet.

The knee-jerk reactions against Chinese apps and suspicions of their censorship and surveillance capacities are to a large extent warranted as there exists extensive documentation of security flaws, privacy violations, and information controls on apps operated in China and internationally-facing apps developed by Chinese companies. Jeffrey Knockel, Citizen Lab

Read more:
Censorship, Surveillance, and Human Rights: 10 Ways These Trends Intersect with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics - NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY -...

In Born on the Water, the childrens picture book accompaniment to The 1619 Project, Smiths paintings bring the cultures of West Africans to life, showing the pre-enslavement history often omitted from classrooms.

One of the things that me and Nikole talk about is theres so much rich history, and culture, and so much joy in these tribes and these people that were stolen from their land, Smith told The 74. You really have to understand all of that to understand how heavy it was, and how tragic it was We really just wanted to show that life.

From his plant-filled Los Angeles home, Smith paired Hannah-Jones and Watsons poetry with family traditions, beautiful hair, dances, imagery that evoked death and spirits. Using a digital speed-sketch style, his illustrations began as monochrome shapes and skeletons in Photoshop, impressions of how he felt after reading and internalizing their verses.

The book hit shelves last fall amid a wave of proposed state laws aimed at preventing students from learning a mythical critical race theory and divisive concepts. In at least four states, legislation attempted to ban the 1619 Project explicitly. So far, Florida has succeeded.

While a vocal minority of lawmakers and parents believe school aged children are too young to grapple with just how violence against Black people was intrinsic to the nations founding, many more yearned for the content. Born on the Water topped bestseller lists as families headed into 2022, looking for ways to talk to children about the country theyll inherit.

Smiths artistic approach seemed a natural fit. In digital paintings, he added layer after layer of color and symbols clouds modeled after picked cotton, the shape of a person sinking underwater, or a green toy tied to a tree, the only sign of life left after colonizers stole a tribe to convey anger and fear in ways young readers could feel without being traumatized by explicit violence.

Long-inspired by Nina Simone to reflect the times, hed balanced trauma and life in childrens illustrations for years, painting Tamir Rice, Elijah McClain and others killed by police.

His second book, My Hair is Poofy and Thats Ok, explored the internalized hatred young Black children develop from racism and microaggressions.

Through his work, which he describes as art as therapy, he tries to help himself and viewers heal the broken bones of society.

For them to say, we have a book about the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, and all of these very heavy things that we as Black people in America, we think about it all the time I felt like thats one of the biggest broken bones in America, he said.

Remember that these werent slaves that were taken, these were brilliant people, and they did some amazing things They knew how to design and build cities, they built this country, and thats why they were stolen, because they were brilliant and good at what they do. We just want to remind people of that, and also how much they fought and resisted and got their freedom back.

And [for] the young folks who are not Black, theres no shame in anything were saying. We want people to grow up having an accurate understanding of what happened in this country. I feel like its really not until we address all of these things openly and honestly that were gonna really grow and move forward as a nation.Nikkolas Smith

Smith blurred linear understandings of time by using symbols across generations, to help young readers understand that [ancestors] vision of the future, their wildest dreams are now embodied in us [were] having to take that mantle and move forward.

And in faces, Smith balanced the world of feelings bound up in the Black experience: from shame, when the protagonist cannot make a family tree beyond three generations, to pride, after her grandmother recounts the rich history of tribes pre-enslavement. Her hair, in Bantu knots, and clothing give reference to past generations.

Ultimately, Smith hopes his work can help the next generation of Black youth have a sense of pride. Over the next few months, hell paint scenes of Ruby Bridges, the first young person to integrate a Southern school in 1960. And next year, hell collaborate with celebrated author Timeka Fryer Brown on a picture book about the Confederate flag.

He expects both will end up on some banned lists.

All we can do is keep putting the truth out there, Smith said, and itll get into the right hands.

All paintings are illustrated by Nikkolas Smith for Born on the Water, a publication of Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers.

See the original post:
Painting Black History in the Time of Censorship for Young Readers: A Conversation with Nikkolas Smith, Illustrator of 1619 Project's Born on the...

Advertisement

As the Winter Olympics kicked off in Beijing, the Chinese and Russian presidents, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, stood in unity to offer mutual support and to challenge the dominance of the U.S. and Europe. There is more at stake in their renewed close partnership than NATO expansion and the crisis in Ukraine, or the supply of natural gas to China from Russia.

The joint statement that the two countries issued in Beijing proclaimed their support for the internationalization of Internet governance and equal rights of countries to regulate the world-wide web. They pledged to deepen bilateral cooperation in international information security, declared support for an international convention on countering the use of information technologies for criminal purposes, and advocated greater participation in the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations specialized agency for information and telecommunications technologies, in addressing these issues.

The world should be alarmed by such resolutions from two nations known for censoring the internet, banning social media and messaging platforms, putting dissidents in jail over comments posted online, and launching misinformation campaigns to meddle in elections in other countries, including the U.S.

At the Beijing Winter Olympics, athletes and journalists had to make use of officially provided wi-fi at designated hotels and venues in order to access the unobstructed internet, including services like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook, all banned in China. The mobile app provided by Beijing authorities to all participants My2022 was found by independent researchers to be a Trojan horse that could secretly harvest users data, which, under Chinese laws, can be passed on to the state.

Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to watch across the Asia-Pacific.

In Russia, Russian authorities successfully demanded the removal of a voting app created by prominent dissident Alexei Navalny from the app stores of both Apple and Google, alleging that it contained illegal content. The country also furthered its censorship efforts to block the use of encryption technology through the Tor browser and several other virtual private network services in 2021, a year that Human Rights Watch called the year of doubling down on Internet censorship.

Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.

These acts of censorship and surveillance speak clearly about what kind of vision of internet governance China and Russia have in mind. Their interpretation of internet information security is about the security of their regimes, not of the security and privacy of users inside or outside of their countries. An internet governance framework with such toxic underlying values of censorship and surveillance should be extremely horrifying to anyone.

Particularly for China, however, such attempts to influence and indeed dominate global technology standards and governance are nothing new. Over the last few decades, China has invested heavily to participate in and influence global technology standard bodies. In November 2021, the Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council published the National Standardization Development Outline, spelling outgoals and actions for China Standards 2035. These China standards are by all means meant to be made global.

The European Union has been on high alert about Chinas ambition, and recently outlined a more aggressive approach to setting global standards, in order to ensure its leadership in development areas such as internet technologies, artificial intelligence and green technologies. To the Europeans, it was clear that Chinas standard-setting exercises at the international level were meant to provide a competitive edge to China and its companies.

International technological standards-setting and internet governance frameworks are complex and diverse. It is also important to remember that traditionally standard settings are led by the private sector and research communities, not by state actors, for good reasons. Chinese and Russian representatives should have their seats at the table, but the world must be extremely cautious about such standard-setting processes being taken over by companies controlled by autocratic regimes, tasked with their governments political agenda. It would be even worse if such autocratic governments are to directly steer and dominate such processes.

The EU has disclosed that they would seek to cooperate with U.S. authorities to monitor emerging standards and to unify the positions from both sides of the Atlantic through regular meetings at the Trade and Technology Council. Clearly, the urgency of autocratic competition means that the two sides must coordinate at a much higher administrative level. However, the present animosity between the Western big tech firms and their governments may threaten to divert the Western governments attention from the need to cooperate on the global stage of standards and governance between the private and public sectors, and across nations.

Moreover, just bringing Europe and the U.S. together may not be enough, as players from Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world must be involved, as well as the private sector and civil societies, in setting the standards and governance that will shape the future internet and its next-generation enabling technologies. Only than can the world build a dam against the tides of censorship and surveillance from the emerging alliance of autocratic states.

We must do so to defend and ensure a free, open, secure, and trusted future internet that supports the principles of democracy and human rights by being more open and inclusive, and differentiate that vision against the governance model promoted by China and Russia, one that is designed to censor and surveil in the pretense of security.

See the article here:
China and Russia Want to Rule the Global Internet - The Diplomat

Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, denied that press freedom was extinct in Hong Kong days after a prominent opposition newspaperwas raidedby the territorys security forces.

The raid on Hong Kongs pro-democracy Stand News online newspaper, which resulted in the arrest of the papers editor-in-chief and several of its senior staff members, was the second high-profile newspaper raid of 2021. Six months earlier, Apple Daily, Hong Kongs largest pro-democracy newspaper, was closed after a similar police raid; its editor, media magnate, and activist Jimmy Lai was later charged with sedition for his role in its publication.

The two raids led a third outlet, Citizen News, to announce its closure on Sunday, arguing that the media environment in Hong Kong was deteriorating following thepassage of a controversial national security lawallowing the territorys police greater authority in confronting dissenting voices. That law, which criminalizes advocating secession from Beijing and foreign collusion to intervene in the citys affairs, has been used to prosecute more than one hundred pro-democracy activists, including Lai.

In 1997, following Hong Kongs handover from British to Chinese rule, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin promised that press freedom would be protected in the territory for at least fifty years, as part of Beijings commitment to the One Country, Two Systems principle. Both Beijing and Hong Kongs Beijing-allied regional government have denied that the national security law infringes on press freedom, arguing instead that the law helped torestore orderafter unrest accompanying themassive protest wave of 2019.

Although Citizen News is the third major pro-democracy newspaper to shut down in the span of a year, Lam denied that a pattern had emerged.

This morning I read news about, because of the closure of online medium, press freedom in Hong Kong faces extinction [...] I just cannot accept that sort of allegations, Lamtold a press conferenceon Tuesday. The day before her comments, she had sworn in the newest lawmakers to Hong Kongs Legislative Councileach of whom had won their seats in the countrysfirst patriots only election.

Lai has been in prison since December 2020. He was charged with, andultimately convicted of, helping to lead a prohibited anti-Beijing demonstration commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, which the citys leadership argued violated COVID-19 quarantine rules.

The former media tycoon has also been charged with sedition under a separate colonial-era law, as have several staff members at Stand News.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for theNational Interest.

Image: Reuters

More:
Censorship? What Censorship? Lam Asks After Hong Kong ...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., argues that the Democrats have done nothing to introduce the spending bill to Republicans.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., penned an op-ed Monday announcing hes embarking on anexodus from Big Tech, starting with YouTube, over what he describes as rampant censorship and an "almost religious adherence to the edicts of government bureaucrats."

"Many in Congress, on the Left and the Right, want to break up or regulate Big Tech, but few of these loud voices have actually stepped up and quit using Big Tech," Paul wrote in a piece for the Washington Examiner. "So today, I announce that I will begin an exodus from Big Tech. I will no longer post videos on YouTube unless it is to criticize them or announce that viewers can see my content on rumble.com."

RUMBLE GOING PUBLIC IN CHALLENGE TO 'BIG TECH'

"Why begin with YouTube? Because theyre the worst censors," he added.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Dec. 13, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Paul complained that whenever he posts content that challenges the current White House narrative concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, no matter how well sourced and researched, YouTube deletes the videos. He saw his account suspended for a week in August for violating the sites COVID-19 misinformation policy over a video claiming surgical masks and cloth masks dont protect against the coronavirus.

"The gall to delete constitutionally protected speech!" Paul wrote Monday. "It is indeed ironic that the censors likely think of themselves as progressive but their actions are more suggestive of the diktats of the Medieval church. Think about it. In the U.S. in 2021, you are being told there are ideas or opinions that are too dangerous for you to see. It is disinformation they admonish, so if you want to stay on their platforms you must conform to their approved opinions."

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., questions National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci on Nov. 4, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

Paul said he may still post a video or two in the future only to decry YouTubes censorship and promote its competing platforms, but that his plan is to eventually quit Big Tech altogether and take his business elsewhere, and he encouraged others to do the same. He also said he created a libertarian news aggregator site called libertytree.com.

"About half of the public leans right," he wrote. "If we all took our messaging to outlets of free exchange, we could cripple Big Tech in a heartbeat. So, today I take my first step toward denying my content to Big Tech. Hopefully, other liberty lovers will follow."

See more here:
Rand Paul quits YouTube, citing censorship | Fox Business