Rebecca MacKinnon

Rebecca MacKinnon

Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong
Joined on July 22, 2005 – Hong Kong
Total Post Views: 46,381

About

Rebecca MacKinnon is co-founder of Global Voices (Globalvoicesonline.org), an international bloggers' network. A veteran journalist and China hand, she currently lives in Hong Kong where she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Center. She teaches online journalism and conducts research on the Chinese Internet, free expression and corporate responsibility. She also serves as Public Lead for Creative Commons Hong Kong. Before coming to Hong Kong MacKinnon was a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where she co-founded Global Voices with Ethan Zuckerman. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon worked for CNN in Northeast Asia for over a decade, serving as CNN's Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 1998-2001 and as CNN's Tokyo Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 2001-03. Her blog is RConversation.com.

Except where otherwise noted, all postings by Rebecca MacKinnon on CircleID are licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Featured Blogs

Skype Messes Up, Badly

The Open Net Initiative's Information Warfare Monitor project has published a stunning report by "Hacktivist" Nart Villeneuve titled: "Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform." It has been covered by both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal... more»

Chinese Internet Research Conference: Getting beyond "Iron Curtain 2.0"

At last week's Chinese Internet Research Conference, much discussion of the "myths and realities" of the Chinese Internet revolved around images, metaphors, and paradigms. In his award-winning paper titled The Great Firewall as Iron Curtain 2.0, UPenn PhD Student Lokman Tsui argued that "our use of the Great Firewall metaphor leads to blind spots that obscure and limit our understanding of internet censorship in the People's Republic." more»

China's New Domain Names: Lost in Translation

This morning I got a bunch of alarmist messages from friends asking about this English-language People's Daily article titled: China adds top-level domain names. The paragraph that's freaking people out is: "Under the new system, besides "CN", three Chinese TLD names "CN", "COM" and "NET" are temporarily set. It means Internet users don't have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of ICANN..." Not for the first time, it appears that the People's Daily's English translation is very misleading. more»

A Balkanized Internet Future?

Joi Ito has an important post [also featured on CircleID] on how the internet is in danger of becoming balkanized into separate "internets". He's not the only person who's concerned. Greg Walton worries about Regime Change on the Internet. My friend Tim Wu, a law professor specializing in international trade and intellectual property, has written an article for Slate: The Filtered Future: China's bid to divide the Internet... more»

Topic Interests

DNSIPv6PrivacyInternet ProtocolWirelessCensorshipSecurityDomain NamesTop-Level DomainsInternet Governance

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Popular Posts

China's New Domain Names: Lost in Translation

A Balkanized Internet Future?

Chinese Internet Research Conference: Getting beyond "Iron Curtain 2.0"

Skype Messes Up, Badly