Does the Great Firewall really isolate the Chinese? Integrating access blockage with cultural factors to explain web user behavior

1 We thank James Ettema for his helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. The current version has also benefited greatly from extended discussion with James Webster, Stephanie Edgerly and Edward Malthouse. We are very grateful for the detailed and constructive feedback from the anonymous reviewers. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the terrific editorial support and direction from the editor of The Information Society. We wish to thank Rufus Weston who enabled the project by providing us access to the comScore data through BBC Global News. Abstract The dominant understanding of Internet censorship posits that blocking access to foreign-based websites creates isolated communities of Internet users. We question this discourse for its assumption that if given access people would use all websites. We develop a conceptual framework that integrates access blockage with social structures to explain web users' choices, and argue that users visit websites they find culturally proximate and access blockage matters only when such sites are blocked. We examine the case of China, where online blockage is notoriously comprehensive, and compare Chinese web usage patterns with those elsewhere. Analyzing audience traffic among the 1000 most visited websites, we find that websites cluster according to language and geography. Chinese websites constitute one cluster, which resembles other such geo-linguistic clusters in terms of both its composition and degree of isolation. Our sociological investigation reveals a greater role of cultural proximity than access blockage in explaining online behaviors. 3 " A new information curtain is descending across much of the world, " announced the U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton in her speech on " Internet Freedom, " two months after attending Her statement illustrates the common understanding that state blockage creates isolated communities on the World Wide Web. Such claims are based on an assumption that Internet users would use all websites if given access. On the contrary, a large body of research on global cultural consumption shows that audiences prefer products that are closer to their culture, even when they have access to products from abroad. Hence, we advocate a framework that integrates access blockage with other social structures, such as language and geography, to explain web user choices. This framework treats online state censorship as a form of cultural protectionism. To test this conceptual framework, we focus on China where Internet censorship is most developed and has garnered enormous attention internationally. We examine global patterns of …