Big mama () is a
Chinese language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
for an
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
censor on web
bulletin board system
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
s in the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
.
Big mamas are human censors and moderators on different online platforms who remove politically sensitive information, comments and postings on news forums and chatrooms. The Chinese government also has a team of censors and
internet police
Internet police is a generic term for police and government agencies, departments and other organizations in charge of policing Internet in a number of countries. The major purposes of Internet police, depending on the state, are fighting cyber ...
to monitor internet content;
[Mooney, Paul. "China's 'Big Mamas' in a Quandary". Yale Global, 12 April 2004. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/chinas-%E2%80%98big-mamas-quandary ] however, it is not possible for them to control the whole internet. Yale Global calls all Chinese censors, including the internet police, big mamas.
However, big mamas are generally understood as censors working in the private sector.
[Tsui, Lokman. "Internet in China: Big Mama is Watching You". Dissertation, University of Leiden, July 2001. http://www.lokman.nu/thesis/010717-thesis.pdf][Zhang, Yin, and Leung, Laifong. "Internet Control in China: A Digital Panopticon". ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2004.][Farrell, Kristen. "The Big Mamas are Watching: China's Censorship of the Internet and the Strain on Freedom of Expression." Michigan State Journal of International Law 15.3, 577-604, 2007.] Private sector companies have a market interest to self-censor their websites and users' comments to fall in line with the Chinese government's internet goals, economic and industrial Chinese development.
[Boas, Taylor. "Weaving the Authoritarian Web." Current History 103.677, 438-43, 2004. http://people.bu.edu/tboas/currenthistory.pdf][Damm, Jens. "The Internet and the Fragmentation of Chinese Society". Critical Asian Studies, 39:2,273-294, 12 July 2007. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14672710701339485] Private companies use many technologies to censor themselves and their users, one of which is hiring teams of computer workers and programmers, called big mamas, to censor the content of website forums, chatrooms, comment sections and
bulletin board system
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
s.
Big mamas are prevalent across many companies and have led to a larger discourse on censorship that can be compared to the Western idea of Big Brother on a smaller scale.
Technology and process
A study of the site
Sina Weibo
Sina Weibo (新浪微博) is a Chinese microblogging ( weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily acti ...
, a microblogging site, was conducted by BBC to see how quickly censors removed material and gain insight about big mamas.
The study concluded many things including that those who are censored often are censored at a faster rate. Around 90% of politically risky content is removed in the first 24 hours, 5% within 8 minutes and 30% in the first half hour. It also concluded just for the site Sina Weibo, a social media platform, there would have to be at least 4,000 monitors if none of the process was automated.
The job of big mamas is becoming more automated as technology becomes more advanced.
[Sinclair, Gregory. "The Internet in China: Information Revolution or Authoritarian Solution?". Dissertation, University of Leeds, May 2002.]
China has allowed foreign companies to be part of the market and has relied on foreign technologies and companies to maintain censorship.
Examples
China has allowed foreign companies to invest and be part of the Chinese internet. In order to maintain a piece of the market these foreign companies, like Yahoo, follow Chinese censorship regulations, often by hiring big mamas to monitor bulletin board content.
Yahoo is the most common example of a private company in China that uses big mamas. The chatrooms are censored in real time; when someone posts a politically risky comment big mamas send them an email warning from Yahoo and their post cannot be seen by others.
Yahoo in 2002 signed a
Public Pledge on Self-discipline (known as The Pledge) promising to regulate chatrooms in line with the Chinese governments laws and regulations.
Approximately 300 other companies signed this pledge, many of which also use big mamas and other technologies to censor users and information.
All chatrooms and bulletin board systems and news agencies in Chinese cyberspace have a big mama that decide what content is acceptable and what content needs removed.
Self-censorship
The role of big mamas can be compared to the western concept of
Big Brother. The pressure of self-regulation on private web companies from the government and market encourages them to self-censor and censor their users. The Pledge is an example of self-discipline and censorship that has been codified and signed by many web companies in China.
[Green, Jonathon, and Nicholas J. Karolides. Encyclopedia Of Censorship. New York: Facts on File, Inc, 2005. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 10 Nov. 2016.] The Pledge promised to remove harmful information from the internet.
The censorship by companies of their chatrooms and bulletin boards has led their users to censor themselves to avoid being censored or punished. Lokman Tsui, who has written about big mamas, calls this concept the digital
panopticon
The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be o ...
.
[Tsui, Lokman. "Internet opening up China: Fact or Fiction?". Media in Transition: Globalization & Convergence Conference, Boston MA, May 2002. http://cmsw.mit.edu/mit2/Abstracts/LOKMANTSUI.pdf] Every level of a network regulates itself and censors the level below; this works all the way down to big mamas who moderate chatrooms down to users who regulate each-other's behavior.
Big mama has created a discourse of self-censorship and control; as Lokman Tsui wrote "Big Mama is watching you".
When users censor themselves at a smaller level it is more effective than direct censorship from the top.
Big mamas have led to both societal and self-censorship that is beyond government-controlled top-down censorship.
Etymology
The name is derived from the name for the wife of the eldest uncle, who in
traditional Chinese
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
families has the responsibility to take care of everyone. Big mamas act quite openly and are not reluctant to admit the fact that they are censoring and why they are doing so. The actions of big mamas are generally taken more with annoyance and amusement than with alarm, and there is often some humorous bantering with big mama.
See also
*
50 Cent Party
*
Big Brother (1984)
Big Brother is a fictional character and symbol in George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party, Ingsoc, wields total power "for its own ...
*
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China (PRC) affects both publishing and viewing online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of th ...
*
Jingjing and Chacha
Jingjing and Chacha (警警 and 察察, a pun on the Chinese word for police, ) are the cartoon mascots of the Internet Surveillance Division of the Public Security Bureau in Shenzhen, People's Republic of China. Debuting on January 22, 2006, t ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
*Tsui, Lokman (2001).
Big Mama is Watching You: Internet Control by the Chinese government. Unpublished MA thesis,
University of Leiden
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...
.
Internet censorship in China