Big Western technology corporations like Google and Microsoft increasingly find themselves in the tricky position of carrying out censorship and surveillance when operating in authoritarian states...This behavior has generated outcry among human rights advocates and in turn threatened to damage the reputation of these corporations at home... The project’s research question asks: What role do human rights norms play when Western multinational technology corporations operating in authoritarian states oppose local censorship rules?...One hypothesis is put forward: A multinational technology corporation will more likely comply with international human rights norms – and hence oppose local censorship laws – the stronger the transnational outcry and the higher the multinational technology corporation’s reputational vulnerability. [Also refers to Cisco, Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo!]