This blog is usually a platform to voice all the positive ways that the online space is being leveraged to benefit society.

But @Melbourne_Muz brought this case of twittersphere injustice to my attention last week.

A woman in China was sentenced to a year in a labour camp for re-tweeting a message encouraging nationalist protestors to destroy Japan’s pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. (Check out the BBC article over here). Apparently her message was intended as a joke – but the Chinese government did not see it so.

As the BBC points out – this is a true example of how closely twitter, and all content online in general, is monitored by the Chinese government.

As the power of social media grows, so too must their worry and concern over how to control the individual voices & opinions it carries. An interesting space to watch indeed.