As the Chinese government moves to block or shutdown several social media sites, NPR reports on the potential influence of Twitter and other like-minded sites for Chinese netizens. Listen to the report here:
Several Chinese NGOs recently held a training course in Beijing to teach citizen journalists how to use Twitter and other new media in their reporting.
The main speaker was one of China’s better known Twitterati, Zhou Shuguang, who goes by the pen name Zola. Zola says that when he’s reporting on politically sensitive stories, Twitter is not only a good reporting tool, but it can also protect him in case he gets detained.
“Citizen journalists will usually say at what time and what place they made their last move,” he explains. “If they run into trouble, netizens or journalists can track them based on the final clues they leave.”
For more on social media in China, see this blog post.