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Introduction
Censorship is a way by which one can edit, suppress or remove something objectionable. A simple example of censorship is when some people impose their political or moral values on others by suppressing words, images, or ideas they find offensive. Thus, a censored person will not change his point of view but will only stop speaking about it. Similarly, a wide range of media, including literature, art, music, electronic communications, and everyday speech, may be subject to censorship. Censorship can also be perceived as reducing unwanted speech and directly or indirectly promoting views that are beneficial to someone.
Purposes and Causes of Censorship
In one form or another, all modern societies resort to censorship, for the implementation of which they build systems of restrictions and prohibitions and use propaganda. Censorship pursues several different goals (Shen and Rory, 2021). Among them is the protection of the political system and state ideology, the retention of power by the dominant political force, opposition to the spread of alien values , or maintaining stability and order in society. Some tasks of censorship can be called constructive. For example, it maintains a higher cultural and moral level of society by limiting obscene language and other immoral behavior. In a democratic society, a balance must be maintained between good censorship and freedom of speech, and the right of citizens to access information freely.
Varieties of Censorship
All work on censoring materials can be divided into several types depending on various factors. According to Niaki et al., restrictions on freedom of speech differ depending on the nature of the prohibited information, its subjects, the way it functions, publicity, and legal regulation. According to the criterion of types of information, it is possible to single out such types of censorship as moral, political, economic, commercial, ideological, and religious. The point about subjects considers the relationship between the regulator, the censor, the source, and the consumer of information. For example, if the source of information independently censors information, this is self-censorship.
Pedagogical censorship controls what information the teacher gives students, and departmental censorship monitors what information goes beyond the department. Corporate censorship provides a set of requirements that all employees who speak publicly on behalf of the company must comply with. According to the mode of functioning, censorship can be regular, carried out on an ongoing basis by specific rules, or spontaneous. The second option is often found in modern society. Publicity indicates how much society is aware of a particular type of censorship. At the legal level, if censorship is officially prohibited but exists, it is considered illegal. If it is enshrined in existing laws, then it is legitimate.
Methods to Implement Censorship
Censorship is a complex mechanism that operates in several ways. According to the methods of implementation, censorship is preliminary, and censorship is subsequent and punitive (Zalambani and Ilaria, 2021). Preliminary censorship consists of obtaining permission to publish this or that information. The specific form of such censorship is the presence of some formal procedure, according to which the author, performer, or publisher must submit texts, sound-video recordings, sketches, and other types of artistic or documentary activity to the state censoring body.
Subsequent censorship consists of evaluating already published information and taking restrictive or prohibitive measures concerning a particular publication or work. Such measures may include withdrawing it from circulation and applying sanctions against individuals or legal entities that violated the requirements of censorship when publishing it (Giannakopoulos, 2021). Punitive censorship imposes sanctions on violators of censorship requirements and reviews any works after publication, unlike preliminary censorship.
Conclusion
Censorship is a severe constraint on freedom of speech in modern countries, even though it sometimes performs valuable functions. Censorship has different properties and types, which makes it hardly noticeable in a small amount. In a democratic society, this mechanism must be used solely to edit harmful information and not to retain power or infringe on any population group. Only in this case justice and equality are possible in the state, which are essential elements for every person.
Works Cited
Giannakopoulos, Dimitrios. Restrictions to Human Rights during COVID-19: Chinas censorship and intrusion on civil society. (2021). Web.
Niaki, Arian Akhavan, et al. ICLab: A global, longitudinal internet censorship measurement platform. 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP). IEEE, 2020.
Shen, Xiaoxiao, and Rory Truex. In search of self-censorship. British Journal of Political Science 51.4 (2021): 1672-1684.
Zalambani, Maria, and Ilaria Lelli. Literary translation as an instrument of censorship in Soviet Russia: The institutionalization of the Soviet translator. The Routledge Handbook of Translation History. Routledge, 2021. 485-504.
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