“Pretty much anybody who does creative work in China navigates the gray zone. People aren't clear about where the line is any more, beyond which life gets really nasty and you become a dissident without having intended ever to be one.”

American author, researcher, and Internet freedom advocate

Rebecca MacKinnon is an American author, researcher, and Internet freedom advocate. She is also the co-founder of Global Voices. A former CNN journalist, she led the network's bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. MacKinnon has played leading roles in journalism and digital rights groups. She served on the board of directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists from 2009 to 2022, was a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative through 2014, and directed the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute. She later served as Vice President for Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation, and since 2026 has worked as a strategic consultant and research fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.