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reader glasses get, 75 book marathon BEGINS...
Censored: Distraction and Diversion inside China's Great Firewall by Margaret E. Roberts
much like my book binges years ago on mercenaries and interrogators (where I read a bunch of books on those topics from all kinds of different angles to build up a more nuanced overall picture), yours truly is starting a backlog on censorship. kind of want to focus on art censorship in particular (for obvious reasons, but this one fell into my lap tangentially about a year ago and you can't really say no to a book, can you? free knowledge (it's_free_real_estate.gif)!
gotta admit, this book reads like a very dry academic essay, and I only really started getting into it after giving myself permission to actually write notes inside the margins. this is one of those where you need to interact with the material or you're going to snooze after a while.
that said, when you do, it's pretty relevant! the author outlines 3 major ways censorship happens:
much like my book binges years ago on mercenaries and interrogators (where I read a bunch of books on those topics from all kinds of different angles to build up a more nuanced overall picture), yours truly is starting a backlog on censorship. kind of want to focus on art censorship in particular (for obvious reasons, but this one fell into my lap tangentially about a year ago and you can't really say no to a book, can you? free knowledge (it's_free_real_estate.gif)!
gotta admit, this book reads like a very dry academic essay, and I only really started getting into it after giving myself permission to actually write notes inside the margins. this is one of those where you need to interact with the material or you're going to snooze after a while.
that said, when you do, it's pretty relevant! the author outlines 3 major ways censorship happens:
1) fear - usually takes the form of intimidation (like getting beat up), or threats ('you'll get fired or not promoted if you don't do x). this is the go-to tool for traditional authoritarian governments, what most people picture as censorship (also leading people to self-censor themselves as well). personally I'd add polarization and shame-based censorship strategies as new subtypes under this one.
2) friction - the passive or active act of making information harder to grab; whether it be locking info behind paywalls, "accidental deletion" or other methods. the internet's really made it much easier to create friction undetected cuz you can always blame shit on broken links or corporations deciding it takes too much money to leave a site up. analog materials tend to be the least predisposed (eg, how punk/activist/prison zines were huge.). think how while TOR exists, most people have no fuckin clue on how to use it and need "a techie" friend to set it up for them.
3) flooding - newest, easiest on social media where institutions or individuals just dump ALL THE INFO/propoganda on sites so it makes it harder for citizens to sift through nuance. least likely to create backlash if institutions are found to be flooding propaganda. relies on that propaganda to be the "cheapest" to mass produce. (GPTchat/AI images feels like an excellent enabler...)
after outlining the theory of censorship above in detail, the author goes into explaining how each era of Chinese history (starting with Mao) attempted each category of censorship with concrete examples. making the note explicitly to look up a documentary on the Cultural Revolution because everything I hear about it reminds me uncomfortably like the whole ideological lockstep that's going on in certian circles these days, where people are encouraged to deny previous statements (whether or not they actually believe in the denying), or friend circles "exiling" / snitching on friends for discussions ostensibly made in private ... the paranoia feels way too real ngl.
while i love my books from the 80's for being timeless, I really appreciated this one for actually tackling how censorship's changed in the era of social media since i think humanity's kinda still trying to figure out how to grapple with those issues. while it's not a new concept, it's a new medium.
i don't really recommend for casual reading (however, Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship is an ABSOLUTE instant buy instead), but if you're seriously boning up on the topic for an explicit activist reason (using the knowledge to actively circumvent/harden stuff against censorship), it couldn't hurt.
2) friction - the passive or active act of making information harder to grab; whether it be locking info behind paywalls, "accidental deletion" or other methods. the internet's really made it much easier to create friction undetected cuz you can always blame shit on broken links or corporations deciding it takes too much money to leave a site up. analog materials tend to be the least predisposed (eg, how punk/activist/prison zines were huge.). think how while TOR exists, most people have no fuckin clue on how to use it and need "a techie" friend to set it up for them.
3) flooding - newest, easiest on social media where institutions or individuals just dump ALL THE INFO/propoganda on sites so it makes it harder for citizens to sift through nuance. least likely to create backlash if institutions are found to be flooding propaganda. relies on that propaganda to be the "cheapest" to mass produce. (GPTchat/AI images feels like an excellent enabler...)
after outlining the theory of censorship above in detail, the author goes into explaining how each era of Chinese history (starting with Mao) attempted each category of censorship with concrete examples. making the note explicitly to look up a documentary on the Cultural Revolution because everything I hear about it reminds me uncomfortably like the whole ideological lockstep that's going on in certian circles these days, where people are encouraged to deny previous statements (whether or not they actually believe in the denying), or friend circles "exiling" / snitching on friends for discussions ostensibly made in private ... the paranoia feels way too real ngl.
while i love my books from the 80's for being timeless, I really appreciated this one for actually tackling how censorship's changed in the era of social media since i think humanity's kinda still trying to figure out how to grapple with those issues. while it's not a new concept, it's a new medium.
i don't really recommend for casual reading (however, Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship is an ABSOLUTE instant buy instead), but if you're seriously boning up on the topic for an explicit activist reason (using the knowledge to actively circumvent/harden stuff against censorship), it couldn't hurt.