Internet censorship was a big topic in the news when we were choosing blog topics and the subject intrigued me enough to do more research. After choosing the topic, my goal was to tie in ethical questions into each blog post. These ethical questions pretty much ask who's right or wrong in a certain situation regarding internet shutdown/censorship.
When I first chose my topic, Egypt was in the headlines and many of the stories were about the internet/telecommunications shut down the government implemented. As I continued to do research, I found the topic to contain a lot more information than I originally imagined. My research was not as extensive as it could've been. I pretty much limited my research to current news articles/research studies. I should've done more research on the past of censorship and contrasted them with the current news. Although my research wasn't as broad as I would've liked it to be, I still learned more than I thought this topic had to offer.
One fascinating fact I'll always remember is that there were way more countries censoring internet and the reasons for censoring were more abundant than I originally imagined. I actually found an article that researched where and why internet censoring occurs. I included this article in my second blog and was truly intrigued that even the United States was classified under "some censorship." After reading further, the reason for censorship in the U.S. was to "maintain national security." This led me to the ethical question of "Is it ethically correct for a government to participate in censoring for safety reasons (national security)?"
I'm glad I chose a topic that interests me as much as this one did. I know censoring the internet will not go away anytime soon. I believe the topic will continually be on the news in the near and far future. This whole semester I was always able to find new news articles relating to the topic meaning there was always something going on regarding censoring. That trend won't stop and I believe that new countries will emerge as thew "new country censoring data." Kindof like this article posted just 5 days ago which talks about new censorship that India is participating in. I definitely will be keeping up with this topic and will continue to probe into new details as they emerge.
