Rebecca MacKinnon

Hong Kong

Rebecca MacKinnon is a veteran journalist, China hand, and online media pioneer. In January 2007 she joined the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Center, where she teaches "new media," and conducts research on the Chinese Internet, free expression and corporate responsibility. She also serves as Public Lead for the Creative Commons Hong Kong project, in collaboration with Yahong Li and Alice Lee at the University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Law.

Before coming to Hong Kong MacKinnon was a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where she co-founded Global Voices, a global citizens' media network.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon worked for CNN in Northeast Asia for over a decade, serving as CNN's Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 1998-2001 and as CNN's Tokyo Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 2001-03. She has also covered major news events in North and South Korea, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

MacKinnon writes and speaks frequently on the future of journalism in the Internet age, the Internet and censorship in China, and issues of free expression and corporate responsibility.

Rebecca's iSummit '08 keynote address:

Free Culture and Free Speech

In the modern democracies freedom of expression is often taken for granted when it is particularly fragile. It is a right that needs to be exercised, because if it isn't, the space that society provides for it shrinks until the next time that right is exercised. The communities that subscribe to the ethos of the Commons are actors in the creation of the space for free expression.

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