Rebecca MacKinnon | |
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Rebecca MacKinnon in Beijing |
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Born | Berkeley, California, USA |
September 16, 1969
Rebecca MacKinnon is a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo, before leaving television to become a blogger and co-founder of Global Voices Online. She is on the Board of Directors of the Global Network Initiative[1] and the Committee to Protect Journalists,[2] and is currently with the New America Foundation as a Bernard L. Schwartz fellow [3]
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Early life
Born in Berkeley, California in 1969. MacKinnon's family moved when she was three years old to Tempe, Arizona where her father Stephen R. MacKinnon took a job as Professor of Chinese History at Arizona State University. Her parents' academic research caused her to spend most of her primary school years in Delhi, India, Hong Kong, and Beijing, China before moving back to Arizona for middle and high school. She graduated from Tempe High in 1987 and graduated from Harvard University in 1991 with a B.A. magna cum laude in Government.
After graduation, she was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan, where she also worked as a Newsweek stringer.
CNN
MacKinnon joined CNN in 1992 as Beijing Bureau Assistant and moved up to Producer/Correspondent by 1997 and Bureau Chief by 1998.[4] In 2001 she became Tokyo Bureau Chief. During her time with CNN, she interviewed notable leaders including Junichiro Koizumi, Dalai Lama, Pervez Musharraf, and Mohammad Khatami.
Recent life and work
In the Spring of 2004, MacKinnon was a fellow of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.[5] That Summer, she joined Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society as a Research Fellow, where she remained until December 2006.[6] Among her projects at the Berkman Center, MacKinnon founded Global Voices Online in collaboration with Ethan Zuckerman.[7] In January 2007 she joined the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong, where she remained until January 2009.[8] She spent February 2009-January 2010 conducting research and writing as an Open Society Fellow, funded by George Soros' Open Society Institute.[9] Then in February 2010 she joined Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy where she is a visiting fellow, working on a book about the future of freedom in the Internet age.[10] As of September 2010 she is also fellow at the New America Foundation.
In January 2007, she joined the inaugural Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board.
Consent of the Networked
MacKinnon's first book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom (ISBN 978-0465024421), was published by Basic Books in January 2012. In an interview, she said that she argues in the book (among other things) that:[11]
- we cannot assume that the Internet will evolve automatically in a direction that is going to be compatible with democracy. It depends on how the technology is structured, governed, and used. Governments and corporations are working actively to shape the Internet to fit their own needs. The most insidious situations arise when both government and corporations combine their efforts to exercise power over the same people at the same time, in largely unconstrained and unaccountable ways. This is why I argue that if we the people do not wake up and fight for the protection of our own rights and interests on the Internet, we should not be surprised to wake up one day to find that they have been programmed, legislated, and sold away.
References
- ^ "Board of Directors". Global Network Initiative. http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/board/index.php. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
- ^ "Rebecca MacKinnon, Ahmed Rashid, and María Teresa Ronderos join CPJ board - Committee to Protect Journalists". Cpj.org. http://cpj.org/2009/12/rebecca-mackinnon-ahmed-rashid-and-maria-teresa-ro.php. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
- ^ "From her own blog". http://rconversation.blogs.com/about.html.
- ^ "CNN Appoints Rebecca MacKinnon Beijing Bureau Chief". Timewarner.com. 1998-03-30. http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,667269,00.html. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
- ^ "Spring 2004 Fellows - Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy". Hks.harvard.edu. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/fellowships/fellows_2004_spring.html. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
- ^ "Rebecca MacKinnon | Berkman Center". Cyber.law.harvard.edu. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/137. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
- ^ Written byRebecca MacKinnon. "Global Voices in English » We are Global Voices. Five years on". Globalvoicesonline.org. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/12/22/we-are-global-voices-five-years-on/. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
- ^ "Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong - Rebecca MacKinnon". Jmsc.hku.hk. 2009-04-27. http://jmsc.hku.hk/cms/component/option,com_magazine/func,show_article/id,21/Itemid,33/. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
- ^ "Rebecca MacKinnon | Open Society Fellowship | Open Society Institute". Soros.org. http://www.soros.org/initiatives/fellowship/focus_areas/grantees/mackinnon_2009. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
- ^ "Center for Information Technology Policy » Rebecca MacKinnon - Google, China, and Global Internet Freedom". Citp.princeton.edu. 2010-02-11. http://citp.princeton.edu/events/lunch/rebecca-mackinnon/. Retrieved 2010-07-17.
- ^ Rosen, Rebecca J. (February 14 2012). "The Fight for a Fair and Free Internet". The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/the-fight-for-a-fair-and-free-internet/253027/.
External links
Mackinnon's websites:
- RConversation (Rebecca MacKinnon's blog)
- Rebecca MacKinnon curriculum vitae (As of Jan.2007)
- Consent of the Networked (website for book)
Organizations:
- Committee to Protect Journalists
- Global Network Initiative
- Global Voices Online
- New America Foundation (2010-)
- Center for Information Technology Policy (2010)
- Open Society Fellowship (2009)
- Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong (2007-2008)
- Berkman Center for Internet & Society (2004-2006)