China trembles at the power of the blog and mobile

I caught this in the Independent newspaper. It focuses on the power of blogging and shows just how instrumental the use of text messaging, combined with personal publishing, can be.

Link: China trembles at the power of the blog – Independent Online Edition > Media

In May, the journalist Lian Yue, in the tropical city of Xiamen, blogged about the horrors he thought would be wreaked on his peaceful beachfront city by a petrochemical plant the government was desperate to see built. A few days later, someone sent an anonymous text message saying the construction of the plant would be like dropping an atom bomb on Xiamen, and SMS messages started to fly around the town. This launched the biggest middle-class protests in China’s modern history.

A media blackout was imposed on the demonstrations, but to the dismay of the Propaganda Department the issue developed into a perfect storm of blogs, SMS messages and internet bulletin-board postings. Several bloggers from the independent collective Bullog attended the demonstration and sent live SMS updates direct to a colleague who had stayed at home at his computer, and he posted their updates minute by minute. They soon attracted so many readers that Bullog’s host server was unable to keep up. Several people have been arrested for spreading the word – the internet police have technological and administrative methods to demolish a blogger’s anonymity.