The Naked Truth-Perspectives On Internet Regulation And Pornography Among Chinese Youth

Sex sells-this mantra is followed by many mainstream media outlets around the world.However, with the upcoming of the Internet, ordinary citizens with Internet access were given an unprecedented opportunity to share information immediately and unfiltered through the forms of mass media. One of the side products of this development is the availability of pornographic websites online. Different states around the world react differently to this development. China, among many other states, tries to filter out pornographic material and other content that is deemed inappropriate.This dissertation investigates in how far the ban on pornography in the People’s Republic of China affects the online activity of university students accessing such material and to what extent such a ban can be upheld in a nation where mobile internet and social media are such dominant and popular forms of communication. In order to illuminate the subject, the research method survey was chosen. The survey was conducted with 60 Chinese graduate and undergraduate students from Fudan University in Shanghai. The answers of the participants to this study show that the online behaviour and the exposure of Chinese students to such material do not necessarily differ greatly from observations in countries with supposedly "free" internet.