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futurejournalismproject:

How News Organizations Can Help Battle Internet Censorship

Internet censorship is growing throughout the world, according to a study conducted by the Canada Centre for global security studies and Citizen Lab, and the BBC.

“This problem of Internet control is becoming an issue for more than human rights concerns,” Ronald Deibert, director of the Centre, tells the New York Times.  ”The fact is that you have dozens of countries not just filtering for porn, but political filtering and key events as well.”

Called Casting a Wider Net (PDF), the study focusses on China and Iran where the BBC has a pilot program to provide proxy services to citizens in an attempt to to get around censorship barriers.

Key takeaways from the report include understanding circumvention tools such as Web proxies as publishing tools or “channels” in and of themselves that help drive content to audiences; an understanding that blocking is unpredictable and often occurs when particular news breaks; and that different methods should be simultaneously deployed such as Web proxies, email newsletters and Twitter posts in order to reach core audiences.

Images: Web Proxy and Twitter logins, and replacement proxy logins circa July 2011 in China.

Report (PDF).