. >> host: we are now joined on "the communicators" by rebecca mackinnon at fellow with the new american foundation. rebecca mckinnon, what is the chinese self-discipline award? >> guest: the chinese self-discipline award is an award given out every year by the internet society of china, and what it is for the top 20 companies that do the best job at censoring contacts, so what goes on in china is china has a system where it is not only censoring at the network level, you know so when you try and access the web site and suddenly get an error message or something like that, but most people in china are using china's -- chinese internet platforms the chinese version of youtube and a chinese company that has their social networking sites, their blog posting platforms and all of those companies are required by the government to police not only you know or copyright stuff, which companies here have to do but also police the platforms were a whole range of political content and they get regular instructions from the authority and if they don't do a good enough job at keeping this stuff off of

. >> host: rebecca mackinnon, how did you get interested in chinese censorship on the internet issues? >> guest: well, it goes way back. i used to work as a journalist in china, i worked for cnn. i was there in the '90s when the internet first showed up there commercially in 1995, and very soon, you know, they were trying to use the internet to do our job, and we were finding we were getting blocked. so i've kind of experienced et as a -- it as a user from the very beginning. but then after, you know, make a long story short, i ended up leaving cnn in early 2004, and i was at harvard, and i ended up spending quite a bit of time at something called the berkman center for internet and society. and i was looking at, you know, the rise of citizen media, and, you know, blogging all around the world and how this is challenging, you know, journalism, how it's challenging governments, you know, looking at it as a global phenomenon. but because i have this background in china, i speak chinese, i read chinese, i quickly became fascinated with what's happening in china and the fact that on the o

. >> host: rebecca mackinnon is a fellow with the new america foundation. people want to read your writings where should they go? >> guest: well i have a blog at our conversation.com. the latter r or you can just google my name, rebecca mackinnon and you will get my blog and my twitter feed and everything else. >> host: we have been talking with her on "the communicators." thank you. >> guest: thank you. .. we don't have to have the microphone so i will repeat your answers. at the first question is going to be, if i can get my powerpoint going here. one moment. there we go. what is your first memory of a first lady? and i know some of you so i can call on you. if no one is brave enough to raise their hand. i know that you all have memories. tell me, yes. eleanor roosevelt when you were a teeny tiny child. barely, just an infant but somehow you remembered it all. what do you recall about her? >> impressive speaker. i have to recall looking back, so to me she came across as rather dowdy, but i'm sure at the time she didn't. >> we will talk about that and cert

>> well, rconversation.com or google my name, rebecca mackinnon, and you will get my google feed and everything else. >> thank you. >> thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> tamara, a political editor and the founder and editor -- editor anda political rol a founder of think

. >> host: rebecca mackinnon is a fellow with the new america foundation. if people want to read your writings, where should they go? >> guest: well, i have a blog at our conversation.com. >> host: r, letter r. >> guest: letter r, or you can just google my name, rebecca mackinnon, and you'll get my progress and my -- blog and my twitter feed and everything else. >> host: we've been talking with her on "the communicators." thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> next, we continue our first lady programming with jacqueline kennedy. barbara perry, former judicial fellow at the u.s. supreme court, recounts the transformative effect mrs. kennedy had on the office of the first lady from her renowned celebrity to her engagement in the arts and the championing of cultural institutions. this is about an hour. >> thank you, don, so much for putting this series together, for that very nice introduction. thank you, too, to mary and flesh shah as well. don and i were chatting just beforehand that it's especially appropriate to talk about jacqueline kennedy at a historical so

. >> new america foundation senior fellow rebecca mackinnon, on the effects of the internet on free- speech in areas like china and the middle east. >> on the one hand, you have an explosion of internet usage, you have all kinds of social networking web sites and a lot of blogging. at the same time the government controls it well enough to prevent people to use the internet well enough to organize an opposition. >> that's tonight on c-span 2. washington journal continues. host: fawn johnson for national journal joins us. she is there correspondent. if you are filling up your tank with gas, what should those people and about the gas tax that is involved in every gallon and how much its ads to doing road projects and infrastructure projects? guest: the first thing to remember is the gas tax has been in steady since 1993, the federal gas tax. any fluctuation that you see is not due to that. it's about 30% of gas taxes, depending on the price of gas. the federal gas tax is 18.3 since. -- cents. it's about 20 cents on average added on to that from the state's. it is a significant chunk, b