Big mama

For other uses, see Big Mama (disambiguation).

Big mama (Chinese: 大妈; pinyin: dà mā) is a Chinese language neologism for an Internet censor on web bulletin board systems in the People's Republic of China.

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 to monitor internet content;[1] however, it is not possible for them to control the whole internet. Yale Global calls all Chinese censors, including the internet police, big mamas.[1] However, big mamas are generally understood as censors working in the private sector.[2][3][4] 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.[5][6] 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 systems.[2][3] 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.[3][2]

  1. ^ a b 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 Archived 2016-11-30 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ a b c Tsui, Lokman. "Internet in China: Big Mama is Watching You". Dissertation, University of Leiden, July 2001. http://www.lokman.nu/thesis/010717-thesis.pdf
  3. ^ a b c Zhang, Yin, and Leung, Laifong. "Internet Control in China: A Digital Panopticon". ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2004.
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ Boas, Taylor. "Weaving the Authoritarian Web." Current History 103.677, 438-43, 2004. http://people.bu.edu/tboas/currenthistory.pdf
  6. ^ 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