Lessons for Chinese Internet Application from Hong Kong Celebrity Sex Scandal
Edison Chen Sex Photo Scandal Disclosed: Lessons for Chinese Internet Application from Hong Kong Celebrity Sex Scandal and Nude Photos
Chinese Hong Kong News Agency Commentary: From fake photos forging the appearance of rare animals to real pictures exposing the sex life of a number of Hong Kong celebrities, such as Edison Chen and Gillian Chung, individual Internet players have proved that they are no less powerful than the world’s leading news broadcasters in riveting people’s attention.
The reach of the Internet has empowered individuals to speak aloud and to be heard, or perhaps, to make their scandals universally known. The sweeping effect challenges the government’s ability not just in Internet governance, but also in crisis dealing.
As the sex scandal victim Edison Chen said in his public statement of apology, “this matter has deteriorated to the extent that the society as a whole has been affected by this sex photo scandal.”
Hong Kong’s mainstream media Wen Wei Po found from its questionnaire reply that 40 percent of high school and primary school respondents say they have seen the sex pictures on the Internet.
Browsing the pictures has become such a trendy thing that those who missed them are shy to admit it, since they could be “laughed” at by their friends, said the newspaper.
However, Edison Chen is not the only one to blame; society is responsible for fuelling the scandal and people should all reflect on it.
Chinese police departments have arrested 11 people suspected of allegedly producing, selling and purchasing discs of the photos downloaded from the Internet. But the efforts have been much slower than the swift spreading of the photos on the Internet.
As American sociologist Duncan Watts put it in his book Small Worlds, with the inception of the Internet, “local actions can have global consequences.”
Networks such as food webs, ecosystems and the Internet turn out to be small worlds, said Watts in the book, which has been published by the Publishing House of People’s University of China, and recommended by sociologists as a “must-read” for decision-making in regards to network governance and organization design.
By the end of 2007, the number of Internet users in China’s mainland surpassed 210 million, and that of registered websites reached 1.5 million. Over 70 million blog sites have been opened on the Internet.
The Internet is going mobile in China. In a few years, the country’s 539 million mobile subscribers will get access to the Internet via their mobile phones.
Government officials have admitted that what they don’t know about the new technology device is far more than they do, and their awareness of its development has fallen behind ordinary citizens.
Zhu Zejun, party head of Zengceng City in south China’s Guangdong Province, told Xinhua that the city government has only recently taken the Internet as a platform to collect public opinions.
“Every social crisis can be reflected through public voices on the Internet. However, not many officials are familiar with the use of the Internet,” said Zhu, who has recently invited a number of Internet experts from Beijing to give seminars in Zengcheng, in an effort to imbue civil servants with the latest development trend of the Internet technology.
Not only government officials, but also traditional media are under pressure to follow what is hot on the Internet, and in the latest photo case, to be checked by inquiring and persistent netizens.
Days after an award-winning photo of Tibetan antelope was exposed by netizens to be a fake, five Chinese leading media outlets including this Xinhua News Agency and the China News Service announced they had terminated contracts with the photographer Liu Weiqiang, and erased all of his works from database.
State media China Central Television (CCTV) sent out a public letter of apology claiming its responsibility in sponsoring the misjudged event.
While acclaim for the Internet’s efficiency in voicing opinions against social injustice, netizens hope for a self-disciplined and civilized Internet environment, and the promulgation of laws on journalism and privacy to better regulate the Internet world.
China’s Internet governance practised mainly by governments and governmental organizations has been quite strict. However, the recent incident over the obscene photos shows the lack of enough legal support to curb pornography from mass spreading on the Internet, and weak law-enforcement power to punish people instigating others to break the law, cheaters and slanders who use the Internet as their tool.
This is the end of the commentary that Lessons for Chinese Internet Application from Hong Kong Celebrity Sex Scandal and Nude Photos. What do you think about it?