The Internet, but not as we know it- A media story

In the Guardian’s post on January 11, 2019 titled The internet, but not as we know it: life online in China, Cuba, India and Russia written by Michael Safi, Lily Kuo, Ed Augustinand Andrew Roth  describes the experiences that countries experience with federal censorship, fake news and how they are able to obtain information around their country.

Because the article discussed the use of the internet, they chose a very unique format to talk about each country. Each country’s section was divided into different formats that are relevant to the location. For example, India’s text was formatted as a WhatsApp conversation because more than 200 million Indians use WhatsApp as their form of communication. China’s looked like a personal blog, Cuba’s mimicked a desktop screen, with the text included in several desktop folders, and Russia looked similarly to Facebook including a photo of a protester in central Russia fighting for free internet. All of these formats reflect how these countries source much of their information due to the censorship in their country. 

“When you consider the ways the internet shapes the way we see the world; how it affects our idea of reality, these differences are more than digital window dressing — they have the power to influence what we think is true.”

 This media creates a much more engaging article to read as it seems to take you on a journey through the world, and allows the reader to reflect on how privileged many of us are to have countless news outlets that are not run by the government. By using gifs,  graphics, photos and text format, this allows the reader to understand how many citizens in these counties receive information.

All of the sections involve citizens within the selected country. The articles describe what many of the residents can and cannot say, what applications they are allowed to use as well as how many of them pass on information to each other. Due to the several stories, there isn’t a complete overarching storyline. However, the sections all cover what censorship is being implemented, how the countries are generally communicating, and how the country is reacting to these things today. 

I think that this multimedia package was very successful. As younger readers choose to have a shorter attention span, by dividing up the text into different formats allows the reader to stay engaged. I think that beginning with the India section, which had the least textual and most unique format drew the reader in. However, I do think that the format was distracting at times. For Cuba, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the moving gif on the side and bottom of the article. When I first looked at the article, it didn’t look like one but rather a bunch of ads. However I think that the format expressed it intended use that the source that people use to receive information is different in every country. 

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