12. Sunday Shutdown Reader: Harold Varmus on Self-Destruction in the Sciences James Fallows How Internet Censorship Actually Works in China

           Toyama wrote an article about the internet censorship in China and its effectiveness among the people. He first emphasized that the first week of October is the National Day holiday in China and they celebrate it with fireworks, musical concerts and others. However, these big events were never organized by the people themselves. The Chinese government controls the social media so that they can prevent the mass protests. Gary King, a political scientist, tested how the Communist Party works on Chinese social media to avoid the mass gathering. He described that the censorship in China is perhaps the most organized and extensive ever implemented by man. He estimates that the censorship is controlled by around 50,000 people who collaborate with 300,000 Communist Party members. He mentioned that he was shocked by the precision of its organization because he discovered that all the objectionable posts were removed within 24 hours of their posting. The Chinese censorship is mainly focused on protests or any mass activities that is related to criticism of the government.

             Toyama`s article is well organized and clear on its information. He used uncomplicated vocabularies to inform the readers about the internet censorship in China. He started the article with an interesting fact about the National Day holiday in China to attract the reader`s attention and eventually, he used it as a strategy to introduce the main topic of the essay. He also consulted a political scientist who has been investigating about this subject so that his article may have higher credibility. He also used many examples to back up his article, for example, the estimation of how many people are involved with the censorship in China and the man in Shaanxi Province who was detained for being retweeted 500 times on Sina Weibo. At the end of his essay, he compared America to China so that the readers understand that China is not the only country that has censorship, America also has laws that censor inappropriate contents on the internet. Toyama finishes his article with an interesting fact about Justin Timberlake so that this article can also be relaxing to read. Although this article was rich in its information, Toyama failed to elevate its credibility by consulting more specialists about their opinions. The information about the suicide bombers was also very distracting for the readers because it is not the main topic of the essay. Overall, this article was well written with professional language and interesting for all types of readers.

http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/how-internet-censorship-actually-works-in-china/280188/