Censorship Research Articles

Violence, Publicity, and Incitement in the Russian Revolution of 1905–7

Violence, Publicity, and Incitement in the Russian Revolution of 1905–7 Susan K. Morrissey (bio) In 1907, the prominent writer and journalist Vladimir Korolenko published The Tragedy of Sorochintsy, in which he recounted a drama of the revolutionary years of 1905–7.1 This story begins in December 1905 in the township of Sorochintsy, Poltava Province, where residents—mostly peasants—had gathered to listen to an agitator and pass political resolutions.2When authorities detained a local schoolteacher on political grounds, they appealed unsuccessfully for his release and “arrested” two local officials in the hope of securing an exchange. Dispatched to dispel these “disorders,” Cossacks shot into a large crowd armed with makeshift weapons, such as scythes and pitchforks, killing 18 or 20; one police officer accompanying the Cossacks was also killed. Over the next days, a punitive expedition—a detachment of Cossacks led by F. V. Filonov, an official in the provincial administration—swept through the area, targeting Sorochintsy before moving on to a neighboring village. The second act moves to the city of Poltava, the provincial capital where Korolenko had lived since 1900. A newspaper reported on events in Sorochintsy, generating talk and rumors but no official response: this was just one episode in an empire-wide crackdown on unrest and dissent. Outraged by what had happened, especially upon learning of another punitive expedition in a village where no prior unrest had occurred, Korolenko had [End Page 489] resolved to lend his influential voice to a public campaign when 12 people from Sorochintsy came to Poltava, having themselves decided to appeal to the press for justice. He personally investigated, conducting interviews and correlating testimonies, and wrote a scathing rebuke to the leader of the punitive expedition. Published on 12 January 1906, his “Open Letter to State Secretary Filonov” was a sensation. Using deliberately provocative language to emphasize both the brutality and the illegality of the state’s actions, he called for Filonov to face a court—or failing that, for Korolenko himself to be prosecuted for his words, secure in the knowledge that he had the facts on his side.3 The edition sold out, prompting the newspaper to reprint the letter as a supplement before being closed down by administrative order two days later on 14 January. On 18 January, however, a revolutionary terrorist shot Filonov on the streets of Poltava and escaped into the crowd. Instead of a public campaign culminating in a showdown in court, as he had intended, Korolenko faced a political storm driven by the media. On the day of the funeral, another local newspaper, this one close to official circles, published Filonov’s open letter in reply to Korolenko (later revealed as a forgery), and a surging right-wing press then accused Korolenko of inciting the murder, an accusation subsequently repeated in the Duma. The “tragedy” concluded with two legal processes. In the first, Korolenko and the newspaper editor were charged under press regulations, but the prosecution was dropped early in 1907 because the official investigation had found the factual content of his letter to be accurate. At this point, he published The Tragedy of Sorochintsy, which narrated events and reprinted the “Open Letter” with detailed footnotes citing the state’s own investigation. The second process resulted in a trial of 19 men from Sorochintsy in September 1907; 11 would be acquitted and 8 convicted with relatively lenient sentences of 6–18 months. Korolenko attended, having supported the accused and their families throughout this period, but his attempt to use the press to compel legal due process had failed. This trial focused solely on the actions of the defendants, excluding the actions of state actors and the punitive expedition from its purview despite the motions of defense attorneys.4 [End Page 490] ________ This case occurred at a critical juncture in Russian history, linking two of its central features: the unleashing of the press following the collapse of censorship and a sharp rise in both state and insurgent violence, including punitive expeditions and terrorist acts.5 Even before 1905, the censorship regime had been under severe strain due to chronic understaffing, a rapid expansion of the press in tandem with urbanization and...

No amount of “AI” in content moderation will solve filtering’s prior-restraint problem

Contemporary policy debates about managing the enormous volume of online content have taken a renewed focus on upload filtering, automated detection of potentially illegal content, and other “proactive measures”. Often, policymakers and tech industry players invoke artificial intelligence as the solution to complex challenges around online content, promising that AI is a scant few years away from resolving everything from hate speech to harassment to the spread of terrorist propaganda. Missing from these promises, however, is an acknowledgement that proactive identification and automated removal of user-generated content raises problems beyond issues of “accuracy” and overbreadth--problems that will not be solved with more sophisticated AI. In this commentary, I discuss how the technical realities of content filtering stack up against the protections for freedom of expression in international human rights law. As policymakers and companies around the world turn to AI for communications governance, it is crucial that we recall why legal protections for speech have included presumptions against prior censorship, and consider carefully how proactive content moderation will fundamentally re-shape the relationship between rules, people, and their speech.

Modern Tajik Media in a Globalized World: Influence of External Factors

The article discusses the trend in the Tajik media in the context of modern globalization and the external factors affecting them. It is noted that in Tajikistan globalization has contributed to the establishment of a less regulated media space; at the same time, the political regime of censorship and media control seeks to make the system integrative and sends all opposition views to the periphery. Consequently, the developed media strategy, based on the political regime of censorship and control of the media in Tajikistan, is in complete contradiction with globalization. The author concludes that the authoritarian regime in Tajikistan is contrary to the strategy of the new imperialism; at the same time, however, it is fuelled by internal tendencies to preserve basic values, which is evident in the lack of integrity of a common information space in modern Tajikistan.

“Don’t Write Anything that Will Bother the Italian Censor”: Pasolini and the Filming of A Farewell to Arms in 1950’s Italy

This essay deals with the second film version of A Farewell to Arms (1957) by focusing on the fact that it was shot in Italy during the period of greatest governmental censorship in the history of the Republic. Resituating the !lm in the political context that shaped its production, it argues that Italian authorities operated a strong control on the remake of Hemingway’s war novel and demanded changes in the script that were responsible for many of the controversies that the adaptation aroused. It finally investigates how Pasolini’s long-neglected notes to the film script received and reinterpreted Hemingway’s reading of war as a site of class struggle.

Governmental Censorship of the Internet: Spanish vs. Catalans Case Study

Governmental Censorship of the Internet: Spanish vs. Catalans Case Study

Figurations of the Feminine in the Early French Women's Press, 1758–1848 by Siobhán McIlvanney

Reviewed by: Figurations of the Feminine in the Early French Women's Press, 1758–1848 by Siobhán McIlvanney Kate M. Bonin McIlvanney, Siobhán. Figurations of the Feminine in the Early French Women's Press, 1758–1848. Liverpool UP, 2019. ISBN 978-1-78694-188-6. Pp. 270. The period 1758 to 1848 spans ninety of the most turbulent years in French history. One of this period's important—but under-studied—cultural innovations is the advent of a French women's press: journals published for—and often by—French women. These publications ranged widely in subject and intended readership, often in tune with changing political regimes and the waxing or waning of press censorship laws. McIlvanney's study shows that there were daring (if only briefly in print) demands for women's rights in the early days of the 1789 and the 1848 revolutions. There were also longer periods during which the women's press was primarily occupied with the "unserious" topics of fashion, marriage, and homemaking, as women were consigned to domesticity and excluded from active participation in public life. Notwithstanding the limited scope of this "womanly" subject matter, it is McIlvanney's provocative thesis that "feminist tenets have always been present in the women's press alongside feminine ones" (15). Even during the misogynistic years of the Empire and the Restoration, the French women's press contained what McIlvanney terms "feminist elements" (11), in spite of its valorization of political passivity, domesticity, and consumerism. This is an eyebrow-raising thesis for those of us who grew up secure in the Woolf-inspired belief that one of women writers' chief occupations is to kill the [End Page 226] Angel in the House. However, McIlvanney argues that creating a journal specifically for women readers, with women-authored articles, was in itself an act with political repercussions: endowing women readers, writers (and even some women editors) "with a sense of social engagement which could not be erased" (73). In an era when female literacy was not a given, the fact that women's journals solicited and published correspondence from their readers created an important space for dialogue, encouraging readers to articulate and express their opinions in a public forum. Some of the arguments which McIlvanney marshals in support of this thesis feel a bit strained. For instance: the upper-class reader could find in fashion journals "the intellectual sustenance and supportive sense of sorority to aid her in her journey toward self-realization" (99–100). McIlvanney's best case for a common denominator linking these disparate journals across the decades lies in their shared, vocal desire for improved education for girls and women: from practical training for running a household, to the promotion of classes where girls and women could study subjects such as botany and natural history. As McIlvanney convincingly demonstrates, a clear realization that the available forms of instruction left women under-prepared for adult life—whatever they believed such a life ought to entail—subtends these publications: whether conservative, radical, or frivolous; whether aimed at a patrician, bourgeois, or working-class readership. In short, Figurations of the Feminine is a detailed, solidly useful contribution to women's history as well as cultural studies, spanning the end of the Ancien Regime through the rise of the Second Republic. Highly recommended. Kate M. Bonin Arcadia University (PA) Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Meeting the Alien Face to Face—in Italy

120 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) Premendra Mitra’s Fiction” by Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, analyzes the famous 1955 Bandung conference’s rarely documented racism, as examined through the lens of Premendra Mitra’s seemingly prescient work, a short story cycle about Ghana-da, “the irascible Bengali teller of tall tales” (193-95). By using these short stories as a case study, Mukherjee explores the seeming lack of historicization of science, notting Suvin’s neglect of the intersectional and race-based facets of sf that depend on such historicization—partially rectified, as he notes, by the work done by various scholars in SFS (196-97). “The Afterlife of the Post-Apocalypse: Dmitry Glukhovsky in China” by Jinyi Chu discusses the cross-cultural exchange with Glukhovsky. He has become quite well-known in fandom, pop culture, and literary circles in China (216-17). Primarily focusing on historicizing and comparative translations, Chu’s contextualization of the Soviet-Chinese “friendship” is enthralling, offering background to just why Metro 2033, Glukhovsky’s 2005 novel, was not only such a big hit, but also how transformative fandom and archival fandom mixed to create their own interpretations and translations where the official translations lagged behind, or even censored content. This piece was my personal favorite, as I am a fandom studies scholar. Chu describes in a nuanced manner the many translations of Chinese to Russian, Russian to Chinese, English to Chinese, and Chinese to English works. Most intriguing to me was the process of fans attempting to translate Metro 2033 after the video game adaptation’s release, with one netizen (now an official government employee) publishing a translation on a fandom website that became so wellknown that she was tapped to do the official translation of the novel’s sequel, Metro 2034 (2009). She even consulted the gamers to discuss names that were not localized in the original novel or on which she was a bit hesitant (228-29). Combined with Chu’s translation of a fan-made parody of a famous Cold War ballad that had been translated from Russian into Mandarin, this chapter is a fine examination of translations, localization, and fandom discourse and engagement with sf. Each chapter offers a new analysis of global sf. The first section, “An Other Transatlantic,” takes a historical lens to Russian, Mexican, and Cuban sf to contextualize cross-cultural exchange between world cultures and how these literatures were able to work around the constraints of government censorship. The second section applies these ideas to Eastern Europe, especially regarding translation studies. The final section takes readers into Bengali myth and history to examine a subtle undercurrent of racism, and then to early-2000s China, where fandom practices keep Russian literature in translation alive and well online and in gaming. These articles continuously engage with the work of Suvin, Jameson, Žižek, and many other notable scholars, placing each into conversation relevant to contemporary literature. If one has any interest in global sf, Science Fiction Circuits of the South and East is a valuable book.—Katherine Randazzo, University of Iowa Meeting the Alien Face to Face—in Italy. Simone Brioni and Daniele Comberiati. Italian Science Fiction: The Other in Literature and Film. STUDIES 121 BOOKS IN REVIEW IN GLOBAL SCIENCE FICTION. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 289 pp. €62.03 hc; €43.42 ebk. When I co-wrote with Arielle Saiber the introduction to SFS’s special issue on sf in Italy (42.2), we decided to end the text—which complained about the scarce interest in sf in Italian academia, the rarity of studies devoted to Italian sf abroad, and the prejudice against sf in Italian culture in general—by optimistically declaring that the cat was out of the bag. This book by two relatively young Italian scholars based in the US and France (Simone Brioni teaches at Stony Brook University in New York and Daniele Comberiati at the University Paul-Valery Montpellier 3 in France) seems to prove that Saiber and I were not over-optimistic. It also confirms that scholarly work on Italian sf seems to be at home only on the border between Italy and the rest of the world. This book is the work of two...

Meeting the Alien Face to Face—in Italy

120 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) Premendra Mitra’s Fiction” by Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, analyzes the famous 1955 Bandung conference’s rarely documented racism, as examined through the lens of Premendra Mitra’s seemingly prescient work, a short story cycle about Ghana-da, “the irascible Bengali teller of tall tales” (193-95). By using these short stories as a case study, Mukherjee explores the seeming lack of historicization of science, notting Suvin’s neglect of the intersectional and race-based facets of sf that depend on such historicization—partially rectified, as he notes, by the work done by various scholars in SFS (196-97). “The Afterlife of the Post-Apocalypse: Dmitry Glukhovsky in China” by Jinyi Chu discusses the cross-cultural exchange with Glukhovsky. He has become quite well-known in fandom, pop culture, and literary circles in China (216-17). Primarily focusing on historicizing and comparative translations, Chu’s contextualization of the Soviet-Chinese “friendship” is enthralling, offering background to just why Metro 2033, Glukhovsky’s 2005 novel, was not only such a big hit, but also how transformative fandom and archival fandom mixed to create their own interpretations and translations where the official translations lagged behind, or even censored content. This piece was my personal favorite, as I am a fandom studies scholar. Chu describes in a nuanced manner the many translations of Chinese to Russian, Russian to Chinese, English to Chinese, and Chinese to English works. Most intriguing to me was the process of fans attempting to translate Metro 2033 after the video game adaptation’s release, with one netizen (now an official government employee) publishing a translation on a fandom website that became so wellknown that she was tapped to do the official translation of the novel’s sequel, Metro 2034 (2009). She even consulted the gamers to discuss names that were not localized in the original novel or on which she was a bit hesitant (228-29). Combined with Chu’s translation of a fan-made parody of a famous Cold War ballad that had been translated from Russian into Mandarin, this chapter is a fine examination of translations, localization, and fandom discourse and engagement with sf. Each chapter offers a new analysis of global sf. The first section, “An Other Transatlantic,” takes a historical lens to Russian, Mexican, and Cuban sf to contextualize cross-cultural exchange between world cultures and how these literatures were able to work around the constraints of government censorship. The second section applies these ideas to Eastern Europe, especially regarding translation studies. The final section takes readers into Bengali myth and history to examine a subtle undercurrent of racism, and then to early-2000s China, where fandom practices keep Russian literature in translation alive and well online and in gaming. These articles continuously engage with the work of Suvin, Jameson, Žižek, and many other notable scholars, placing each into conversation relevant to contemporary literature. If one has any interest in global sf, Science Fiction Circuits of the South and East is a valuable book.—Katherine Randazzo, University of Iowa Meeting the Alien Face to Face—in Italy. Simone Brioni and Daniele Comberiati. Italian Science Fiction: The Other in Literature and Film. STUDIES 121 BOOKS IN REVIEW IN GLOBAL SCIENCE FICTION. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 289 pp. €62.03 hc; €43.42 ebk. When I co-wrote with Arielle Saiber the introduction to SFS’s special issue on sf in Italy (42.2), we decided to end the text—which complained about the scarce interest in sf in Italian academia, the rarity of studies devoted to Italian sf abroad, and the prejudice against sf in Italian culture in general—by optimistically declaring that the cat was out of the bag. This book by two relatively young Italian scholars based in the US and France (Simone Brioni teaches at Stony Brook University in New York and Daniele Comberiati at the University Paul-Valery Montpellier 3 in France) seems to prove that Saiber and I were not over-optimistic. It also confirms that scholarly work on Italian sf seems to be at home only on the border between Italy and the rest of the world. This book is the work of two...

Why Are They So Afraid of Children’s Books? The Subversive Power of Imagination (Part 2)

The second part of the article explores particular examples of subversive books in American, Soviet, and Russian children’s literature as well as the revolutionary role of fantasy and innovative literary forms through different periods of the his­tory of the USA, the Soviet Union, and Russia. To show how children’s literature was often at odds with particular governments and common opinions, the article uses the examples of the American Left writings for young readers, the 1920s So­viet children’s prose and poetry, and contemporary Russian children’s books. The article discusses the various attempts of governmental censorship and control over this literature and the ability of writers and publishers to resist the ideological and political pressures.

A Mortality Approach for Estimating the Probability of Default in Credit Risk

Credit risk is an important problem in banking, finance and insurance sectors. The financial institutions have to use information related to some specific characteristics of borrowers, such as borrower reputation, capital and capacity in order to make the right decision whether or not to grant credit. Regulatory capital allows banks to better capture unique risks and exposure cash flows. In this work, we propose a new approach to estimate the probability of default (PD) by using mortality tables based on progressive censored. The PD is a crucial value, which is used in computing the required capital against credit risk exposures. We use the internal rate approach and measure the PD based on time of default. Then we create a new model for Progressive censored data. The new model takes advantage simultaneously from both the progressively censored and Moody’s models, and where the objective is to compute the cumulative probability. The overall proposed approach is illustrated by examples to show its applicability and demonstrate its performance. Our research findings show that the PD based survival analysis for progressive censored increases each year similar to Moody’s. It impacts on worst –case default rate and the maturity adjustment.

Neorrealismo à comédia à italiana

O período neorrealista do cinema italiano iniciou-se no imediato pós-guerra (1945), tendo seu período de produção mais importante e intenso entre 1945 e 1948. Paralelamente, desenvolveu-se a “commedia all’italiana” que, com características próprias, possuía um poder de atração cada vez maior junto ao público italiano. Na “commedia all’italiana” dá-se continuidade aos temas neorrealistas (as diferenças sociais e a pobreza na Itália do pós-guerra, o desemprego, a questão agrária, a falta de moradia, etc.), que podiam ser abordados com menos temor da pressão da censura, já que essa tendia a manter sua atenção voltada com mais empenho para o cinema ‘sério’. O público foi atraído pela forma com que os argumentos eram tratados, menos crua e triste daquela do cinema neorrealista: pois esse tipo de cinema melhor permitia a identificação do público com histórias parecidas com as suas e com temáticas sociais que abordavam as dificuldades pelas quais todos passavam, desde que fossem tratadas de forma cômica e divertida. A “commedia all’italiana” apresenta um catálogo de estereótipos italianos em um momento em que uma nova identidade nacional estava sendo construída e sentia-se a necessidade de sair em busca de novos caminhos a serem seguidos.

Pilar Godayol i Annarita Taronna, eds., Foreign Women Authors under Fascism and Francoism. Gender, Translation and Censorship

Ressenya: Pilar Godayol i Annarita Taronna, eds. 2018. Foreign Women Authors under Fascism and Francoism. Gender, Translation and Censorship. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 217 p.

O Debate do Lícito e do Ilícito na Internet: liberdade de expressão e remoção de conteúdo

O presente trabalho buscou uma análise da liberdade de expressão na internet, para levantar as técnicas usadas pelos magistrados para dirimir conflitos nos quais é requerida a remoção de conteúdo da internet, além da eficácia das determinações judiciais e a responsabilização dos provedores. Considerando a estrutura técnica de operação da internet, os limites da liberdade de expressão foram confrontados à luz dos diplomas normativos, da jurisprudência e de doutrinas, bem como possibilidade de indisponibilização de conteúdo e seus requisitos, com base no Marco Civil da Internet, inclusive por meio de medida liminar. Ao final, foi dedicado um capítulo sobre as formas de responsabilização civil dos provedores e sua proteção jurídica. O trabalho concluiu que os limites da liberdade de expressão deverão ser determinados caso a caso, por meio do posicionamento subjetivo do magistrado, que irá sopesar, no caso concreto, interesses, valores e princípios colidentes; que a remoção compulsória de conteúdo da internet dependerá da ilicitude do conteúdo, reconhecida pelo Juiz, de decisão judicial e de indicação de URL para sua validade, salvo quando o conteúdo reputado ilícito violar a intimidade sexual de outrem; e que na maioria dos casos a baixa eficácia das sentenças que determinam a retirada de conteúdo ocorre pela lentidão do judiciário e do modus operandi da internet. No que tange à retirada por meio de liminar, o trabalho concluiu que esta não cabe em qualquer caso, sob o risco de configurar censura prévia. Já quanto à responsabilização dos provedores, a regra geral é que ela é subjetiva, exceção quando ele contiver controle prévio do conteúdo postado por seus usuários.

Unharmonious Images Conceived by Troubled Minds: Graphic and Literary Caricatures in Heinrich Heine’s French Affairs and French Painters

Although the German poet Heinrich Heine, who moved to Paris in 1831, repeatedly declared his commitment to a subjective and politically engaged way of artistic expression, he vehemently professed his dislike of the graphic satires which appeared in La Caricature and represented the “Citizen King” Louis Philippe in the shape of a pear. Nevertheless, Heine’s own accounts of the current French Affairs for the German press exhibit many clear analogies to the seemingly detested satiric drawings: Not only did he use them as an important vehicle of his own political criticism, but he also matched them with his own verbal caricatures of the French monarch and his cabinet. After showing that Heine and the caricaturists did indeed share the same butts and means of criticism, the article analyses both the graphic and verbal strategies and techniques they employed to avoid press censorship.

Anti-muslim sentiment on social media in China and Chinese Muslims’ reactions to hatred and misunderstanding

This study documents the extensive online anti-Muslim sentiment in China as well as the use of social media by Chinese Muslims from various backgrounds to engage with the online public sphere and respond to this hostile discourse. We analyzed more than 10,000 social media posts on Weibo relating to Muslims and Islam and conducted in-depth interviews with 34 Chinese Muslims who were active users of social media. Our findings reveal an anti-Muslim online frame, and we detail the ways in which Chinese Muslims have sought to influence public policy in order to protect their rights. The participants in this study responded to hateful posts and worked to increase the understanding of their religion and culture by providing glimpses of their daily lives and by discussing Islam. Nevertheless, owing to government censorship and to the prevailing Han-centric discourse, Chinese Muslims continue to face numerous risks and challenges, particularly in coping with the ideological conflict between their religion and the atheistic ruling party.

Policing printers and booksellers before and after 1789: a case study in Bordeaux

Abstract This article examines the Bordeaux bookseller and printer Arnaud-Antoine Pallandre’s two censorship trials in 1775 and 1790 to compare state–media relations during the late Bourbon monarchy and the French Revolution. An entourage of protectors kept Pallandre in business even though he flouted pre-revolutionary book trade legislation. After 1789, his printing and bookselling shop became a centre of pamphlet sales and counter-revolutionary gatherings that came under intense scrutiny by patriots in the clubs, the National Guard and the crowds, who pressured the municipal governments to end Pallandre’s trade in counter-revolutionary pamphlets. He eventually went to the guillotine in 1794. This article suggests that members of formerly privileged groups continued to wield considerable influence over printers and booksellers in France after 1789, making them objects of both government and popular censorship. In the struggle to achieve limits on a free press, printers and booksellers came to be regarded as individuals with public (potentially dangerous) political affiliations in a new way, a development that may help explain the high levels of media repression in the French Revolution.

Current characteristics of chronic hepatitis B in Egypt

Background and aimIn the era of hepatitis C virus eradication, Egypt had to pay attention to the two million infected with chronic hepatitis B. This study aimed to observe the current characteristics of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in Egypt.Patients and methodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted on 183 patients with chronic HBV infection. The demographic, epidemiologic, clinical, laboratory, and treatment data were collected from patient registries.ResultsPositive hepatitis B e-antigen (HBeAg) cases represented 18.04%. They were younger (31.09±8.542–38.22±10.6 years) (P<0.05), with higher alanine aminotransferase (84.91±67.855–53.75±55.575 U/l) (P<0.05) and viral loads (3.58×108±16.49×108–1.74×106±10.1×106 IU/ml) (P<0.05), particularly in chronic active carrier states. Unsafe hygienic procedures (sharing toothbrushes and razors) were the main infective routes (73.7%). Coinfection with hepatitis C virus was documented in 14.7%, along with 16.3% with schistosomal infestation. HBV and hepatitis D virus coinfection was reported in 8.9% of the studied cohort. Radiologically, liver cirrhosis was detected in 44% of cases, with associated splenomegaly in 20.7%. Histologically, 40.2% were found to have significant pathology (A2, F2>2). Thirty (16.3%) cases were outside international guidelines of treatment, only for follow-up. Overall, 70.5% were subjected to lamidine therapy, with unfair responses mainly detected in the HBeAg-positive group (71.4%), who responded marvelously to interferon finite regimens. HBeAg-positive status and schistosomiasis were found to be associated with poor response to oral antivirals by multivariate analysis (P<0.05).ConclusionMore classified governmental censorship efforts, notably on private organizations, along with awareness levitation are promptly mandated. Additionally, the poor response to oral antivirals in HBeAg-positive patients signifies sticking to interferon as a first-line treatment option.

Journalists’ Safety and Multifaceted Censorship in Colombia: An Exploratory Study

Safety of journalists has been studied as part of freedom of expression. However, there is scarce qualitative research on Colombian regional journalists’ safety. This chapter seeks to address issues surrounding journalists’ safety and censorship in Colombia shedding light on triple menace: the decrease in journalistic quality, citizens’ right to information and the influence on journalists’ professional behavior by analysing the multifaceted press censorship from 2008 to 2017, which occurred before and after the Peace Accord between FARC guerrilla and president Juan Manuel Santos. Media ethnography and in-depth interviews were used. Employing the Bourdieu’s Theory of Professional Field, the praxis, rationale and censorship of journalists during the conflict were mapped. The findings shed light on how the censorship went on during a more stable period in the conflict and how journalists were silenced and threatened. Keywords: Safety, Journalists, Censorship, Self-censorship, Conflict, Media History, Colombia, Qualitative Research, Media Ethnography DOI : 10.7176/IAGS/78-05 Publication date: December 31 st 2019

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRIMINALIZATION OF HATE SPEECH IN SPAIN: EVOLUTION, IMPACT AND EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF NORMATIVE COMPLIANCE AND SELF-CENSORSHIP

The popularization of social media as a forum for the expression of ideas and for political debate has increased in recent years the, always present, tension between freedom of expression and public control of offensive or dangerous speech. Many democratic states criminalise hate speech and other types of offensive expression, and now are social Media themselves that can exercise prior censorship over content on the basis of similar rules but much more restrictive and ambiguous. Combining normative analysis with empirical methodologies, this paper analyses, focusing on Spain, the implications that Criminal laws and "community guidelines" have on citizens' decisions to express themselves freely, which is fundamental for the configuration of a real democracy. It is made up of two studies: the first traces the evolution of judicial resolutions in Spain that prosecute possible crimes of terrorism and hate for political expression on social networks, as a result of the popularisation of these since 2014 in concurrence with a broad and ambiguous legislation. The results show a significant growth of state control over expressions that are essentially offensive but that, in most cases, do not represent a clear and present danger and could go beyond the doctrine of the ECHR. In the second part, an empirical study is carried out to analyse how the existence of hate speech crimes and social media rules affects the decision to express political ideas on social networks or to self-censor. The results show that a large part of the sample is self-censoring but that criminal law and content rules, in particular the severity of the law and the certainty that it is applied, do not have a direct effect on the decision to express ideas on the Internet, while the social perception of what others do is decisive. It is discussed how this calls into question the legitimacy of the evident limitation of freedom of expression of some crimes in Spain.

Beckett, Censorship and the Problem of Parody

Beckett, Censorship and the Problem of Parody