ABSTRACT
Chapter Four outlines a context for understanding something of the media environment in China. This relates to entertainment TV as well as the news to mobile phone communications. This chapter shows how a liberative perspective of technology does not aid in understanding events in China when it comes to technological innovation. Under a democratisation framework, the internet is perceived as a vital tool in the eventual democratisation of China, via the emergence of public opinion and a space for the free discussion of the political agenda; the internet is understood, in other words, as a liberative technology. However increases in technological power both increase the surveillance power of the state as much as it might increase the communicative capacity of the individual. Further there is evidence of how censorship becomes decentralised so that the individual self-monitors their own speech aware of a line that should not be crossed even if they do not know exactly where that line is. Chapter four outlines how we cannot reduce social effects positively or negatively to technology and that social forces have a strong role to play in both regards. Taking recourse to Bakhtin the chapter provides an avenue for understanding this dialogical attribute.
