China’s so-called Great Firewall is well known for filtering out controversial content relating to democracy, Tiananmen Square and criticism of Beijing. But as this New York Times article shows, a large part of the censorship effort includes positive spin to proactively promote the government’s view:

Not content merely to block dissonant views, the government increasingly employs agents to peddle its views online, in the guise of impartial bloggers and chat-room denizens. And increasingly, it is backing state-friendly clones of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, all Western sites that have been blocked here for roughly a year.

The government’s strategy, according to Mr. Bandurski and others, is not just to block unflattering messages, but to overwhelm them with its own positive spin and rebuttals.

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According to MSNBC, Google appears to have stopped censoring its Chinese search engine, allowing content related to “Tank Man” (the iconic image of the man in Tiananmen Square facing down a tank), “Tiananmen Square massacre,” “Xinjiang independence” and “Tibet Information Network.”

Google is denying that it has lifted its censorship, but regardless of the cause, more banned information is getting through:
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Everyone has seen the photo of the little Vietnamese girl running away from the napalm, the man in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square and the death of Neda during the Iranian protests.  UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave an inspiring talk at TED and explained why these images came to symbolize and publicize a movement for the rest of the world to see.  These moving photos evoke a strong emotional response and are testaments to the power of the image to inspire action and civic participation.

As I discussed in an earlier post, technology and social media are helping to give a voice to people whose stories might otherwise not be heard.  In his talk, Brown says:
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