This paper examines the ethics of internet censorship across cultures, focusing on China and Saudi Arabia as contrasting case studies. It raises the philosophical question of whether outsiders can legitimately judge another culture's information restrictions, and whether censorship can ever serve a population's best interests. Using a qualitative methodology grounded in existing scholarship, the paper reviews sources covering internet filtering, corporate complicity, human rights, and the cultural underpinnings of governance in both nations. The literature review identifies key texts that illuminate how political control in China and religious law in Saudi Arabia shape information policy, ultimately framing censorship as a contested intersection of sovereignty, ethics, and human rights.
The internet has created a world information community. People of countries that are geographically remote from one another now exchange ideas and information, and through these communications gain a sense of one another and their cultures. This allows people to rely on sources other than state-created images and perceptions about cultures beyond their own. The perception that develops might stand in stark contrast to that provided by the state, and as such would alter thinking in ways inconsistent with how the state wants its citizens to view the world. The potential for individual thinking, analysis, and the formation of ideas and opinions inconsistent with state-projected images could lead large groups of people within a country to become independent of their nation-state's cultural, social, and political norms. Therefore, censorship of the internet and other sources of information and means of communication is imposed upon certain populations outside of western cultures in order to maintain social norms and the nation-state's ability to govern. If we judge censorship from our own cultural vantage point, many of us would be outraged, claiming that censorship in any form is a violation of human rights. Is it possible, then, for censorship to be, after all, in the best interest of a culture?
In a country like China, where a pseudo-system of communism continues to be imposed upon the people even as the country pursues a capitalistic global economy, citizens are subjected to certain laws and communist governance that could ostensibly weaken the government's ability to govern its large, expansive geography and one of the world's largest populations — if that population began in large part to embrace democratic principles and culture that might lead them to resist and revolt against their government.
In most Islamic countries, especially Saudi Arabia, religious laws and governance are part of the daily lives of Muslims. It goes beyond prayer and religious observance, and is integrated into every aspect of Muslim life: how women dress, the segregation of the sexes, education, and how Muslims conduct themselves socially, politically, and privately. There is no separation between Islam and how Muslims live their daily lives, except that there are two distinct levels of legal application: civil court, dealing with charges and crimes that are strictly of a human character, and those crimes and charges deemed or defined as being against God and Islam. A parking ticket, for instance, might be a civil matter, but a woman appearing in public with her legs, arms, face, and hair exposed would be considered a blatant act of defiance against God and Islam, and would therefore be tried and judged for punishment in a court of Islamic law. This is the culture of many Islamic states, and it is a culture that would understandably become fragile — perhaps even ungovernable — if its populations, especially the young minds of men and women, were allowed to roam freely through the information age and gain access to cultures that do not hold religious traditions, values, and laws in such high regard.
Does society outside of these cultures have a right to determine what is censored and what is ethical in the traditions and customs of people who, prior to the onset of the information age, lived their lives entirely within these traditions? Can those of us outside those cultures judge and determine what is in the best interest of those people when it comes to information and communications with the world community beyond nation-state borders?
These are, of course, philosophical questions to be answered. This study examines these and other questions as they regard censorship and ethical governance from the perspective of controlling information and communications between people. To narrow the focus and scope of what might otherwise become too broad and unwieldy a task, this study concentrates on China and Saudi Arabia. Using these two nations — which censor information and communications for radically different political and cultural reasons — we can make social, religious, political, and economic comparisons that may help us understand censorship in either nation as ethical or not ethical.
Time restrictions and geographical limitations will impact the depth of this study and eliminate the possibility of an original independent quantitative approach. Therefore, this study will be a qualitative one, based on the existing body of scholarship, quantitative studies, and peer-reviewed research. Quantitative research will be analyzed, compared, and contrasted in support of arguments made here, or used to test the validity of claims about the ethical censoring of information and communications — and to identify where such censorship may constitute a violation of human rights.
"Annotated sources on censorship, filtering, and human rights"
Each of the works mentioned here can contribute to the research topic of this study. Other sources, especially those providing a greater, wider breadth of statistical data, will be included to the extent that such works are available. The availability of this kind of data may represent one of the study's weaknesses — a limitation that was anticipated, albeit to an unknown degree, and is precisely the reason this study takes a qualitative direction.
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