“The state is the ‘public authority.’  It owes this attribute to its task of promoting the public or common welfare of its rightful members.” (Habermas, 1991)

“Chinese authorities are now more worried about the social media than the mass media.” (Gapper, 2009)

Mass Media

Four dimensions or roles of traditional journalism, as perceived by the public, were exemplified in a 2005 survey: good neighbor, watchdog, unbiased and accurate, and fast (Heider, McCombs, & Poindexter, 2005).

Generally, a reader will benefit from educated suggestions. Previous research has focused on mass communication and given attention to the “gatekeeper” role of the newspaperman (Carter, 1958). Other research has sought to determine what factors are related to the decisions by newspaper gatekeepers to run certain pieces of information and not others, or to feature certain items and “bury” others (Donohew, 1967). Future research must analyze the role of gatekeeper from a new perspective: an electronic news editor.

France – Unbiased and Accurate

“as part of a trend toward globalization, scores of participating citizens are transcending France’s cultural borders to join these powerful online communities and in turn, bypassing established policies concerning the free flow of information, isolation and protectionism” (Warlaumont, 2010)

South Africa

Bosch (2009) “explores student use of Facebook at the University of Cape Town, as well as lecturer engagement with students via the new social media”

Mexico, Colombia, and Various Terror Networks

“Sureos gangs, Mexican drug cartels, and online terrorists, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Hamas, and al Qaeda, are distinctly different in the way that they utilize the Internet, but there are some similarities.” (Womer & Bunker, 2010)

Russia

“Yuri Milner and his partner, Gregory Finger, had built Digital Sky Technologies from a small Russian investment venture to a holding company that controlled the businesses behind 75% of the pages served on the Russian-speaking web. Milner has invested nearly $1.3 billion in American Internet companies. He has increased his Facebook stake to just more than $800 million for roughly 10% of the company, which makes him the second-largest outside investor.” (Hempel, 2010)

Canada

India – Watchdog

Police are using Facebook to nab traffic violators (Kumar, 2010) and discover student teacher tiffs (Kanwar, 2010).

China

Social

“A Chinese government-backed think tank has accused the U.S. and other Western governments of using social-networking sites such as Facebook to spur political unrest and called for stepped-up scrutiny of the popular sites.” (Associated Press, 2010)

Economic

“Currently, China has 400 million Internet users. However, the country’s Internet market is still small in terms of revenues. Since Internet users only account for 30% of its population, there is great potential for foreign Internet companies.” (Comtex, 2010)

“It’s easy to access media sites such as the websites of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. But twittering or adding an entry to Facebook was much more difficult.” (Gapper, 2009)

“According to reports, Google is saying they may have had enough of the mainland’s extreme censorship policies and recent cyber attacks on Google’s wildly popular Gmail service blamed on Chinese hackers. Foreign business people and tourists visiting China are sometimes surprised to discover just how intense Chinese Internet censorship is. Those attempting to access the social networking site Facebook for example, will discover that their profile and those of their friends can be viewed in China, but Facebook subscribers are not allowed to make any changes to their page such as adding status updates or writing replies to messages. That means for international Facebook users in China, the site is a window to the rest of the world but that window is closed for two-way traffic.” (China Post, 2010)

Political

“After suggesting that it might exit the country in the wake of philosophical differences with the Chinese government over search censorship, Google is again changing its Google China website to comply with .” (Schiller, 2010)

Global

“Facebook is looking to China, Russia and Japan for its next phase of expansion as its overall growth has begun to taper.” (Bradshaw & Gelles, 2010)