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Self-censorship

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Image of a scene in Pompeii, showing an erect penis. Image from a French book, of 1838.
Same illustration in 1877: not showing an erect penis
Correct (left) and censored (right) depiction of a scene in the Mastaba of Ti. The censored depiction hides the genitals.

Self-censorship is the act of limiting and classifying one's own speech and expression. This affects the freedom of the press and the freedom of expression. It occurs at publishers,with people producing media or movies. There are many different reasons for self-censorship. The boundaries between self-censorship and censorship are often unclear. An investigative journalist may hold back a story, because he is unsure if it is true. He may also be forced to not publish it, because it would affect the people who currently run the state, or who have a big influence.

The practice of self-censorship, like that of censorship itself, has a long history.[1][2]

There are different reasons why people take part in self-censorship. These reasons can be broadly classified and include:

  • People want to be part of a larger group. These groups often share the same social values ans beliefs. This means that people, who want to belong to the group will change their expression so that is more like what the other members of the group say.
  • The reasons why people change their expression may be economic. They will want to meet the expectations of a market.
  • Creators of artworks may remove material because they fear the that their government might findit controversial. They fear that the government might sanction them if they publish the material. [3][4][5]
  • People might remove materials because they think they are not tasteful, or that they are indecent.

Being part of a group

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People may adjust their beliefs or opinions to go along with the majority attitude. There are different factors that contribute to self-censorship, such as gender, age, education, political interests, and media exposure. For some, the reason for their change in beliefs and opinions is rooted in fear of isolation and exclusion. For these people, the expression of their own beliefs is less important than the fear of negative reactions of others to the expression of those beliefs.[6][7]

Economic reasons

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The editor of a periodical may consciously or unconsciously avoid topics that will anger advertisers, customers, or the owners in order to protect their livelihood either directly (i.e., fear of losing their job) or indirectly (e.g., a belief that a book will be more profitable if it does not contain offensive material).[8][9][10] This phenomenon is sometimes called soft censorship.

Taste and decency

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Art or journalism involving images or footage of murder, terrorism, war and massacres may cause complaints as to the purpose to which they are put. Curators and editors will frequently censor these images to avoid charges.[11] Concepts like political correctness and spiral of silence have been found to contribute to the existence of self-censorship.[12][13][14]

As preference falsification

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Self-censorship is a form of preference falsification, but the concepts are not identical.  Self-censorship is a passive act. It amounts to the suppression of potentially objectionable beliefs, opinions, and preferences. For this reason, it amounts to self-silencing. It is an act of passivity. Preference falsification is the misrepresentation of one’s preferences under perceived social pressures.[15] It is often performative, as it can involve the active manipulation of one’s preferences to impress an audience or avoid its wrath.   For an illustration, consider a discussion on a controversial subject. We are among the participants. If we keep quiet, that is self-censorship. Insofar as our silence conveys agreement with a position that we actually dislike, our self-censorship amounts also to preference falsification. If instead of keeping quiet, we speak up during the discussion in favor of position A, when we actually favor B, that is preference falsification but not self-censorship. In pretending to like A, we have gone beyond self-censorship. We have deliberately projected a contrived opinion. In a nutshell, preference falsification is the broader concept. Whereas all self-censorship falsifies a preference through the signals it sends, preference falsification need not take the form of self-censorship.

Examples

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  • There is a popular English song called the Crabfish, from the 19thcentury. It is about a man who puts a lobster into a chamber pot. His wife doesn't know this, and users the chamber pot. As a result, she gets bitten. In the original version, she gets bitten in the arse and the genitals ("cunt"). Over the years, the text was adapted, and today, she's only bitten into the face and nose.
  • In 1967, Ballantine Books published an adapted version of the book Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. The version was aimed at students. Changes included the removal of the words hell, damned, and abortion.[16][17] From 1973, only the censored version was printed. In 1979, Bradbury was made aware of this, and demanded that the original version be published.[18]
  • And Then There Were None is a mystery novel, published by Agatha Christie, in 1939. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers,[19] after an 1869 minstrel song that serves as a major plot element.[20][21] The US edition was released in January 1940 with the title And Then There Were None, taken from the last five words of the song.[22] Successive American reprints and adaptations use that title, though American Pocket Books paperbacks used the title Ten Little Indians between 1964 and 1986. UK editions continued to use the original title until 1985.[23]

References

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  1. Baltussen, Han; Davis, Peter J. (2015-07-27). The Art of Veiled Speech: Self-Censorship from Aristophanes to Hobbes. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-9163-6. Archived from the original on 2024-06-30. Retrieved 2021-05-15.
  2. Richard L. Williams (2016). "Censorship and Self-censorship in Late Sixteenth-century English Book Illustration". In Michael Hunter (ed.). Printed Images in Early Modern Britain Essays in Interpretation. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315246048. ISBN 978-1-315-24604-8. Archived from the original on 2021-05-14. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  3. Shen, Xiaoxiao; Truex, Rory (2021). "In Search of Self-Censorship". British Journal of Political Science. 51 (4): 1672–1684. doi:10.1017/S0007123419000735. ISSN 0007-1234.
  4. Tannenberg, Marcus (2017-06-01). "The Autocratic Trust Bias: Politically Sensitive Survey Items and Self-Censorship". Rochester, NY. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2980727. hdl:2077/52479. SSRN 2980727. Archived from the original on 2024-06-30. Retrieved 2021-05-14. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. Robinson, Darrel; Tannenberg, Marcus (2018-04-01). "Self-Censorship in Authoritarian States: Response Bias in Measures of Popular Support in China". Rochester, NY. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3161915. hdl:2077/56175. S2CID 149703668. SSRN 3161915. Archived from the original on 2024-06-30. Retrieved 2021-05-14. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. Bar-Tal, Daniel (2017). "Self-Censorship as a Socio-Political-Psychological Phenomenon: Conception and Research". Political Psychology. 38 (S1): 37–65. doi:10.1111/pops.12391. ISSN 1467-9221. Archived from the original on 2021-05-14. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  7. Detert, James R.; Edmondson, Amy C. (2011-06-01). "Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-Granted Rules of Self-Censorship at Work". Academy of Management Journal. 54 (3): 461–488. doi:10.5465/amj.2011.61967925. ISSN 0001-4273. Archived from the original on 2024-06-30. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  8. Germano, Fabrizio; Meier, Martin (2013-01-01). "Concentration and self-censorship in commercial media". Journal of Public Economics. 97: 117–130. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2012.09.009. hdl:10230/11728. ISSN 0047-2727. Archived from the original on 2021-05-14. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  9. Gray, Garry C.; Kendzia, Victoria Bishop (2009). "Organizational Self-Censorship: Corporate Sponsorship, Nonprofit Funding, and the Educational Experience*". Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie. 46 (2): 161–177. doi:10.1111/j.1755-618X.2009.01209.x. ISSN 1755-618X. S2CID 146421736. Archived from the original on 2021-05-08. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  10. Hassid, Jonathan (2020-06-01). "Censorship, the Media, and the Market in China". Journal of Chinese Political Science. 25 (2): 285–309. doi:10.1007/s11366-020-09660-0. ISSN 1874-6357. S2CID 216446374. Archived from the original on 2024-06-30. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  11. Cook, Philip; Heilmann, Conrad (2013-03-01). "Two Types of Self-Censorship: Public and Private". Political Studies. 61 (1): 178–196. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.00957.x. hdl:20.500.11820/9b485cf0-e99f-4c5d-bfe6-652521c12299. ISSN 0032-3217. S2CID 142634871. Archived from the original on 2024-06-30. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  12. LOURY, GLENN C. (1994-10-01). "Self-Censorship in Public Discourse: A Theory of "Political Correctness" and Related Phenomena". Rationality and Society. 6 (4): 428–461. doi:10.1177/1043463194006004002. ISSN 1043-4631. S2CID 143057168.
  13. Kwon, K. Hazel; Moon, Shin-Il; Stefanone, Michael A. (2015-07-01). "Unspeaking on Facebook? Testing network effects on self-censorship of political expressions in social network sites". Quality & Quantity. 49 (4): 1417–1435. doi:10.1007/s11135-014-0078-8. ISSN 1573-7845. S2CID 7489939. Archived from the original on 2024-06-30. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  14. Hoffmann, Christian Pieter; Lutz, Christoph (2017-07-28). "Spiral of Silence 2.0". Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society - #SMSociety17. Toronto, ON, Canada: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1–12. doi:10.1145/3097286.3097296. ISBN 978-1-4503-4847-8. S2CID 19728058. Archived from the original on 2024-06-30. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  15. Kuran, Timur (1997). Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-70758-0. Archived from the original on 2024-06-30. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
  16. Bill Crider, Charlotte Laughlin (1980), [Google Books "Reprints: Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451"], Paperback Quarterly (in German), vol. III, no. 3, The censorship began with a special 'Bal-Hi' edition in 1967, an edition designed for high school students... {{citation}}: Check |url= value (help)
  17. Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, Dawn B. Sova (2011), 120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature (in German) (Second ed.), Checkmark Books, p. 488, ISBN 978-0-8160-8232-2, In 1967, Ballantine Books published a special edition of the novel to be sold in high schools. Over 75 passages were modified to eliminate such words as hell, damn, and abortion, and two incidents were eliminated. The original first incident described a drunk man who was changed to a sick man in the expurgated edition. In the second incident, reference is made to cleaning fluff out of the human navel, but the expurgated edition changed the reference to cleaning ears.{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. Bill Greene: The mutilation and rebirth of a classic: Fahrenheit 451. Compass. Villanova University, Februar 2007.
  19. "Review of Ten Little Niggers". The Observer. 5 November 1939. p. 6.
  20. Peers, Chris; Spurrier, Ralph; Sturgeon, Jamie (1999). Collins Crime Club: a checklist of the first editions (2nd ed.). London, UK: Dragonby Press. p. 15. ISBN 1-871122-13-9.
  21. Pendergast, Bruce (2004). Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie. Victoria, British Columbia: Trafford Publishing. p. 393. ISBN 1-4120-2304-1.
  22. "American Tribute to Agatha Christie: The Classic Years 1940–1944". J S Marcum. May 2004. Retrieved 16 October 2018.
  23. British National Bibliography for 1985. British Library. 1986. ISBN 0-7123-1035-5. Retrieved 21 April 2019.