Censorship

:For other uses, see the disambiguation section.

Implementation

Censorship is regarded as a typical feature of dictatorships and other authoritarian political systems. Democratic nations usually have far less institutionalized censorship, and instead promote the importance of freedom of speech.

Related Topics:
Dictatorship - Authoritarian - Freedom of speech

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Some thinkers understand censorship to include other attempts to suppress points of view or ideas such as negative propaganda, media manipulation, spin, disinformation or "free speech zones". These methods, collectively, tend to work by disseminating misleading information or by preventing other ideas from obtaining a receptive audience.

Related Topics:
Propaganda - Media manipulation - Spin - Disinformation - Free speech zone

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Others point out the suppression of access to the means of dissemination of ideas by governmental bodies such as the FCC in the United States of America, the CRTC in Canada, or a newspaper that refuses to run commentary the publisher disagrees with, or a lecture hall that refuses to rent itself out to a particular speaker, or an individual refusing to finance that lecture.

Related Topics:
FCC - United States - CRTC - Canada

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Prevention and bypassing

Data havens and decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing systems such as Freenet can be used to prevent censorship. A recent phenomenon for avoiding censorship and speaking directly to members of society is culture jamming, where individuals or non-conforming groups use large-scale corporate techniques to attack implicit domination and censorship through trivial or deliberately irrelevant messages. More traditionally, mass protests are a method for resisting unwanted impositions.

Related Topics:
Data haven - Peer-to-peer - File sharing - Freenet - Culture jamming

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Interestingly, the censorship of swear-words in the United States seems not always to extend to non-American pronunciations. Instead of shit, the Scots and Northern English variant shite may apparently be used, as may fook for fuck. (Note: this was witnessed on broadcast television in early 2004, before the FCC levied several highly-publicized fines.)

Related Topics:
Scots - Northern English

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Censorship around the world

• Censorship in Australia
• Censorship in Egypt
• Censorship in France
• Censorship in Germany
• Censorship in Hong Kong
• Censorship in Iraq
• Censorship in Israel
• Censorship in Japan
• Censorship in Malaysia
• Censorship in the Republic of Ireland
• Censorship in Saudi Arabia
• Censorship in Singapore
• Censorship in Taiwan
• Censorship in the Russian Empire
• Censorship in the United Kingdom
• Censorship in the United States
• Censorship in Tuva
• Internet censorship in mainland China
• Internet censorship in Saudi Arabia

Other types of censorship

• Advertising regulation
• Censorship by organized religion
• Censorship in cyberspace
• Censorship under communist regimes
• Censorship under fascist regimes
• Fundamentalist censorship
• Moral censorship

Censorship of media

• Banned books
• Banned films
• Banned computer and video games
• Censorship of music
• Editing of anime in international distribution
• Video game controversy