Censorship Of Information Research Articles

Book bans in political context: Evidence from US schools.

In the 2021-2022 school year, more books were banned in US school districts than in any previous year. Book banning and other forms of information censorship have serious implications for democratic processes, and censorship has become a central theme of partisan political rhetoric in the United States. However, there is little empirical work on the exact content, predictors of, and repercussions of this rise in book bans. Using a comprehensive dataset of 2,532 bans that occurred during the 2021-2022 school year from PEN America, combined with county-level administrative data, multiple book-level digital trace datasets, restricted-use book sales data, and a new crowd-sourced dataset of author demographic information, we find that (i) banned books are disproportionately written by people of color and feature characters of color, both fictional and historical, in children's books; (ii) right-leaning counties that have become less conservative over time are more likely to ban books than neighboring counties; and (iii) national and state levels of interest in books are largely unaffected after they are banned. Together, these results suggest that rather than serving primarily as a censorship tactic, book banning in this recent US context, targeted at low-interest children's books featuring diverse characters, is more similar to symbolic political action to galvanize shrinking voting blocs.

Biblioclasm :A Sociocultural Study of Knowledge Destruction and Prevention Through Legal Mechanisms

‘Biblioclasm: A Sociocultural Study of Knowledge Destruction and Prevention Through Legal Mechanisms’ explores the complex and multifaceted phenomenon of biblioclasm, the deliberate destruction of books and knowledge repositories, from a sociocultural perspective. This paper explores the causes of biblioclasm, its historical and modern expressions, and the function of legislative safeguards in preserving intellectual variety and cultural heritage. The study explores the sociocultural roots of biblioclasm and considers the different ideological, political, religious, or cultural motivations that people or groups may have for wanting to eliminate information. The study offers insights into the destructive forces that have affected human history by using historical examples like the burning of the Library of Alexandria and contemporary examples like the destruction of cultural artifacts by terrorist organisations. This study also emphasises the value of legislative safeguards in preventing biblioclasm and safeguarding the world's cultural heritage. It examines the efficiency of international treaties and conventions, such as the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, in averting the loss of knowledge and fostering cultural preservation. The study also looks at how domestic legal systems in particular areas or countries deal with biblioclasm. Keywords - Book Burning, Biblioclam, Iconoclasm, Destruction of Knowledge, Information Censorship, Destruction of Information

Digital Authoritarianism as a Modern Threat to Democratic Stability: Restriction of Freedom or Network Politicization?

This article is dedicated to the identification of contemporary instances of digital authoritarianism, exploring its definitions, characteristics, methodologies, and the tools employed by authoritarian governments to manipulate the social and political conduct of their citizens and control the flow of information. It aimed to consolidate power, control and manipulate information, and suppress dissent. The article delves into the various interpretations of digital authoritarianism by analyzing its fundamental elements and evident expressions. Through a comprehensive review of scholarly literature, reports, news publications and case studies, the article aims to unravel the dynamic nature of digital authoritarianism, shedding light on how it adjusts to technological progress and confronts conventional notions of liberty within the digital era. Digital authoritarianism materializes through mass surveillance, cyber attacks, information censorship, and the targeted utilization of citizen data. A thorough exploration of digital authoritarianism can empower democratic societies to preclude potential infiltration of such manifestations, uphold democratic principles, and arrange the landscape based on these principles while ensuring unfettered access to information.

Introduction of Censorship by Foreign Internet Platforms

Internet platforms have considerable power over information flows on a global scale in the conditions of mass digitalization of modern life. Currently, Internet platforms can control the ability of self-expression of billions of Internet users, including Russian ones. The concentration of the most popular platforms in the United States, where there is a vacuum of legal regulation of Internet platforms that enjoy legal protection as distributors of information along with the press and other types of media, has led to the fact that Internet platforms are actively creating a system of censorship of information, carefully masking such censorship and giving it the appearance of conscientious moderation aimed at combating extremism, false information, aggression, and other illegal phenomena. Censorship in its digital incarnation is fundamentally different from censorship that existed in the past. If earlier censorship used to be based on normative regulation and was regulated in detail, now it is hidden and it uses new technical opportunities. Being a product of the American political system, Internet platforms censorship is based on the political preferences of their leadership. Using historical and legal analysis, including analysis of the history of censorship since its appearance and transformation into the state institution, the author concludes that Internet platforms censorship represents a new phenomenon that has not been described in detail before, requiring reflection in legislation in order to ensure protection of the constitutional rights of users. Effective protection of the constitutional rights of Internet users is impossible without legislative prohibition of Internet platforms censorship and international cooperation aimed at combating this phenomenon.

Digital authoritarianism and social censorship in the context of the pandemic COVID-19

Censorship, which each of us experiences today, arose in the historical context in which the type of market economy developed characteristic of the Western world since the Renaissance. Thus, censorship may have certain normative aspects and may be accompanied by prohibitions. Such a distinction is applicable to all phenomena present in a society. An example can undoubtedly be the language norms imposed during the pandemic situation by the authorities and not only, which we all know. Therefore, from a social and cultural point of view, information censorship is primarily interested in what is at the content level of the reported facts, as being an image of the existing society and culture. The aim of the paper is to distinguish the specificity of social censorship in different countries, through the lens of censorship culture, against the background of digital authoritarianism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cracking the Anonymous IoT Routing Networks: A Deep Learning Approach

In recent years, IoT technology has been one of the most rapidly expanding fields, connecting over 27 billion connected devices worldwide. Increasing security concerns, such as software flaws and cyberattacks, limit the use of IoT devices. Tor, also known as “The Onion Router,” is one of the most popular, secure, and widely deployed anonymous routing systems in IoT networks. Tor is based on a worldwide network of relays operated by volunteers worldwide. Tor continues to be one of the most popular and secure tools against network surveillance, traffic analysis, and information censorship due to its robust use of encryption, authentication, and routing protocols. However, ToR is not anticipated to be entirely safe. The increasing computational capabilities of adversaries threaten Tor's ability to withstand adversarial attacks and maintain anonymity. This article describes the foundation of the Tor network, how it operates, potential attacks against Tor, and the network's defense strategies. In addition, the authors present a framework for deep learning that uses bandwidth performance to identify the server's location in Tor, thereby compromising anonymity. This article examines Tor's network's current and projected future in the Internet of Things.

Panda Games: Corporate Disclosure in the Eclipse of Search

We show that firms strategically alter their disclosures when investors’ access to information via search engines is interrupted. We conduct a textual analysis and exploit an exogenous event—Google’s 2010 surprising withdrawal from mainland China, which significantly hampered domestic investors’ ability to search for foreign information but did not affect their cost to access domestic information. Following Google’s exit, Chinese firms’ announcements on foreign transactions become more bullish relative to domestic transactions. Optimism in disclosure is especially rosy if the press releases are conveying negative news or are issued by poorly governed firms. This effect is mitigated in the presence of foreign investors or analysts affiliated with foreign brokers who are not subject to foreign information censorship by the government. The increase in search cost also appears to leave domestic news media and financial analysts more vulnerable to the influence of corporate disclosure. These optimistic announcements allow insiders to harvest higher returns from selling their shares and are associated with a higher likelihood of corporate misconduct. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71272072 and 71572042]. X. Yu gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Arthur M. Weimer Fellowship. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4521 .

Research on Basic Information of Enterprise Electronization under the Background of Big Data

Ensuring information security is a maintenance process that combines dynamic and static. First of all, you can use a series of protective tools, such as firewalls, operating system authentication, encryption, and so on. At the same time, use some dynamic detection tools. With the rapid development of Internet technology, big data, cloud computing, and other technical terms are no longer strange to people. Today's society is increasingly networked, creating a common platform for big data resource sharing and data communication in various industries. Big data and cloud computing technology have been applied to every field of human life with a strong penetration, resulting in technological innovation in various industries. Under the background of the rapid development of big data and cloud computing technology, the traditional enterprise form has been difficult to cope with the increasingly fierce competitive environment, making the electronic enterprise become the inevitable trend in the development and reform of enterprises in today's world. Electronic enterprises promote the efficient and vigorous development of enterprises, improve the speed, efficiency, and market competitiveness of enterprises, and better adapt to the changes in the market environment caused by big data and cloud computing. With big data and cloud computing as the background, this paper studies and analyzes the inevitability, basic characteristics, existing problems, countermeasures, and other basic information of enterprise electronization, so as to provide theoretical guidance for enterprise electronization. It has the ability to control the dissemination and content of information, ensure the censorship of information, and provide the basis and means of investigation for emerging network security issues.

A Criminological Study on Trends of Cybercrimes Against Financial Institutions in Sri Lanka

Cybercrimes are virtual crimes that evolved according to nature and the intention of the culprit. Numerous cyber-attacks have been led by several anonymous groups to establish the censorship of information. As the technology used for any activity in the banking industry is continuously upgrading with monetary values as well as with information of clients, it is necessary to have a piece of updated knowledge on both cyber-attacks and technology for both clients and employees of the banking industry. Furthermore, it is crucial to study the nature, techniques and impact of cybercrimes as its techniques are continually evolving with technology. Moreover, it would be possible for individuals to assume that their confidential data and transactions are secured with the bank. This study investigated trends of cybercrimes against Sri Lankan financial institutions using seven Licensed Commercial Banks and uncovered its nature, techniques, impact and strategies that were applied by institutions for the protection of its clients.

Librarians’ Management of COVID-19 Information Glut on Social Media: A Study of Information Censorship, Evaluation, Use and Dissemination in Ogun State, Nigeria

ABSTRACT This study investigated how librarians manage the COVID-19 information glut on social media, in order to curtail the increased spread of fake news, fake health advice, and fake cures in the context of Nigeria. A self-developed questionnaire was used to collect data (via an online survey) from 92 librarians in Ogun state, Nigeria. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 22. Findings revealed that librarians were knowledgeable about credible sources of COVID-19 information on social media (mean = 3.24). To a very high extent, they considered and checked the source of COVID-19 information properly before sharing on social media (mean = 3.42) and also checked for the accuracy of COVID-19 information before further sharing (mean = 3.47). The study further suggests that adequate knowledge about the credible sources of COVID-19 information among librarians might have influenced their censorship and evaluation of COVID-19 information. The study, therefore, argued that though social media are important platforms for the dynamic and quick spread of COVID-19 information, caution should be taken, to evidence the source’s credibility before use and further sharing.

The Architecture of Algorithm-driven Persuasion

Persuasion is a process that aims to utilize (true or false) information to change people’s attitudes in relation to something, usually as a precursor to behavioural change. Its use is prevalent in democratic societies, which do not, in principle, permit censorship of information or the use of force to enact power. The transition of information to the internet, particularly with the rise of social media, together with the capacity to capture, store and process big data, and advances in machine learning, have transformed the way modern persuasion is conducted. This has led to new opportunities for persuaders, but also to well-documented instances of abuse: fake news, Cambridge Analytica, foreign interference in elections, etc. We investigate large-scale technology-based persuasion, with the help of three case studies derived from secondary sources, in order to identify and describe the underlying technology architecture and propose issues for future research, including a number of ethical concerns

Constitutional legal peculiarities of information censorship in social networks

The subject of this article is the Russian and foreign legislative norms, materials of law enforcement practice, user policy agreements, scientific literature on the topic, and reports of the international organizations on human rights. The object of this research is the legal relations that regulate the existing mechanisms of information censorship on the Internet. The research contains a detailed historical-legal analysis of the mechanisms and principles of the implementation of regulation of the right to freedom of speech in the United States, with emphasis on the law enforcement practice. The author examines the latest Russian model of restrictions on the distribution of information, as well as the mechanism for preventing violations of the basic human rights and freedoms, which limits the possible impact on the exercise of political rights in the territory of the Russian Federation. The scientific novelty consists in the detailed analysis of previously unstudied aspects of restriction of information realized by the administration of social networks. In the course of this work, the author explores various approaches towards understanding the term censorship, as well as the constitutional legal peculiarities of information censorship on the Internet. The author proposes ways to develop legal provisions that regulate the exercise of rights in this sphere. The conclusion is made that on the need for development and legislative consolidation of the standards for user policy agreements, taking into account all available recommendations. The author makes proposals on improving the constitutional legal regulation of the right to information.

Suppressing communities: An analysis of LGBTQ+ censorship in libraries

Librarians serve as defenders of intellectual freedom and social responsibility, and this includes speaking out against censorship. Censorship of information, materials, and books occurs in the public, but censorship can also occur in libraries themselves. Those impacted the most by this censorship are marginalized communities, such as the LGBTQ+ community. The purpose of this paper is to explore how internal, external and institutional censorship affects the LGBTQ+ community and what librarians can do to uphold their defense against censorship. Internal, or self-censorship, occurs at the librarian level where LGBTQ+ materials may be hidden by librarians or library staff or simply not ordered due to pressure from the community the library serves. External censorship occurs at the community level where the community culture pushes for the censorship of LGBTQ+ materials. Lastly, institutional censorship occurs at the classification level where classification models such as the Dewey Decimal System or subject headings may not provide accurate representation for LGBTQ+ materials. In order to put an end to these forms of censorship, trained and certified librarians must act as agents of change, committing to their due diligence to provide information to all members of their communities.

TV Media in the Soviet System: The Collision of Modernity and Restrictions

The emergence of the new media was related to the established social order at that time. Television in Lithuania was first introduced in the late 1950s when the country was under the Soviet rule. Soviet ideology utilized the modern media to plan the modernization of the society, i.e. to create a new system. And the achievement of the goals involved coercion, deceit and information censorship. The technologically advanced TV media was restrained by the authorities. The author of this text analyses Soviet Lithuanian television in the context of other media, exhibiting modus operandi of the Soviet regime and the behaviour of people who worked in the system.

Censorship of Library Collections: An Analysis Using Gatekeeping Theory

One pressing issue in libraries today is the censorship of information. This theoretical essay uses Kurt Lewin's gatekeeping theory to examine the decision-makers as well as the different pressures and constraints that are at issue in decisions regarding challenges and censorship attempts that occur in regards to library collections. Knowing who the decision-makers, or gatekeepers, are in the decision-making process, whether it is library boards, library directors, or public officials, is crucial to the understanding of censorship in public libraries. Without a clear understanding of the function of gates and gatekeepers in the decision-making process, libraries may allow unintended censorship of ideas and information to persist.

The two side coin of the online social media: eradicating the negatives and augmenting the positives

The study sought to empirically examine the opposing encounter of the social media and suggests regulatory initiatives that will arrest the dilemmas. Eighteen (18) academics and professionals were thoroughly interviewed. Thematic analysis was employed for the data analysis. It was found out that although there are great roles played by the online social media in sectors including social and community relations, business, education and politics, there are also several forms of abuses of the social media. The unprofessional behaviours of some users of the online social media and poor media ethics need urgent management. Implications for moral and ethical, educational and business policy have also been discussed. The paper suggests ways to regulate the abuses of the social media, including censorship of information and controlled measures against those who abuse the use, and also exposes users to the benefits associated with the social media.

Knowledge of the Mass Murder of Jewish People Possessed by Ordinary German

In 1933, the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, came to political power in Germany. As a direct result of the Nazi’s actions, approximately 6 million Jewish victims were killed. The Nazi Party members were undoubtedly responsible for these results, but were the non- party Germans? To answer this sensitive question, the extent of knowledge of these events must be investigated. To what extent did “ordinary” German civilians know about the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust in Berlin from 1942 to the end of the Second World War? The population must be categorized by those who knew about the Jewish deportations and murders, those who chose to know, those who chose not to know, and those who did not know.
 To investigate this idea, oral interviews were collected. They hold value as a first hand perspective, but have limitations of dishonesty and censorship of information. A large collection of survey information from 1985 was heavily considered, in addition to various secondary sources such as articles, videos, and books, and primary sources such as maps and photographs.
 After weighing probable statistics and popularity of Nazi ideology, evidence supports the idea that more Germans chose not to know about the extermination of Jews than any other extent, due to the high number of Nazi ideology supporters, high degree of terror propaganda, and indoctrinated youth.

Panda Games: Corporate Disclosure in the Eclipse of Search

We show that firms strategically alter their disclosure strategy when investors’ access to information via search engines is interrupted. We conduct a textual analysis and exploit an exogenous event—Google’s 2010 surprising withdrawal from mainland China, which significantly hampered domestic investors’ ability to search for foreign information but did not affect their cost to access domestic information. Following Google’s exit, Chinese firms’ announcements on foreign transactions become more bullish relative to domestic transactions. This effect is mitigated in the presence of foreign investors or analysts affiliated with foreign brokers, who are not subject to foreign information censorship by the Chinese government. Moreover, compared to those that operate domestically, firms with foreign operations issue rosier annual reports and manage earnings to a greater extent after Google’s departure; their stock prices also become less informative. These optimistic announcements or annual reports allow insiders to sell more shares at a higher price.

La relación entre los militares y los corresponsales argentinos autorizados a informar desde las islas durante la guerra de las Malvinas

The Falklands War marks a turning point in war journalism. The islands location at 464 kilometers from the Argentine coast and more than 12,700 kilometers from the British caused the military to exercise information censorship and allow access to a few correspondents. This paper uses a qualitative methodology based on in-depth interviews to Argentine correspondents who covered the conflict to get a new vision through unpublished testimonies. The article concludes that there was a manipulative attempt, although it is clear there was an incoordination between the military controls regarding the censorship criteria.

Action-Oriented Responses to Sexual Harassment in Egypt

Action-Oriented Responses to Sexual Harassment in Egypt