Analyzing Trends in Internet Usage to Show Why Internet Access Should not be Censored or Restricted by Government Introduction In the United States of America internet access is unrestricted by government, and free speech is practiced on the internet. In other countries, however, this is not the case. Many countries have their internet access throttled or restricted by their government, and many countries do not have internet access at all. This paper will focus on the effects that restricted internet access has on people’s browsing habits, and how it affects the attitude towards the government of the chosen country as a whole. China is one of the largest and most well known country to practice rigorous censoring of the internet, and as such much of this paper will focus on China. However, many other countries practice internet censorship in the same way that China does, therefore the message of this paper can be applied to many, if not all, of the countries who censor internet access. Website Restrictions Social Networks Social networks are one of the easiest outlets for a country’s government to justify blocking. From Facebook to Twitter, any social media outlet can be seen as a way for citizens to express …show more content…
China has blocked many news sites and poses many obstacles for journalists who would want to work in China. The Wall Street Journal has been censored in China for a while, according to publisher Dow Jones (Frizell, 2014). Many other news resources have been blocked in China as well. The New York Times posted an article in English and Chinese about prime minister Wen Jiabao in 2012, which resulted in the English and Chinese versions of the website receiving a government ban (Mathew, 2014). Bloomberg news is also blocked in China as a result of many stories and investigations, exposing the wealth of President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders (Mathew,