Note for the reading ‘Hong Kong Cyberculture: A Case Study’

With reference to the article ‘Hong Kong Cyberculture: A Case Study’, the scholar Amy Lai Tak-yee tried to examine the issue of cybercultre and cyberdemocracy of Hong Kong. As Lai (2002) stresses ‘anonymity is safeguarded to the extent that one does not have to be responsible for his/her words’, it seems that people are free to express their view without censorship and greater democratization of the society is achieved; however, in other words, for those people who belong to the subordinate group (i.e. low income, low educational level / less elitist, non-white, women and homosexual, etc.) may be easily criticized or even be ‘flamed’ by dominant group. Since there are lots of invisible boundaries set by the discourses of marginalizing ‘others’, the context of ‘cyberdemocracy’ seems to exist in name only.