Meta tag: Is government surveillance encouraging self-censorship on the internet? Several studies have found that government surveillance boosts self-censorship. Do you avoid expressing your opinions online?
Intro: Do you avoid voicing your opinions online? Perhaps you refrain from posting controversial political opinions in fear of a potential backlash from friends, work colleagues or even strangers who hold a perceived majority view compared to your own “minority” view? According to a recent study, “Under Surveillance: Examining Facebook’s Spiral of Silence Effects in the Wake of NSA Internet Monitoring”, published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, government surveillance of the internet could be responsible for self-censorship
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It begins to strip away the Internet's ability to serve as a venue for all voices, instead catering only to the most dominant,” says Elizabeth Stoycheff lead researcher of the study at Wayne State University.
A study by the Pew Research Center conducted in 2014 entitled “Social Media and the Spiral of Silence” found that social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter could actually encourage self-censorship. The study indicated that while people are very concerned about the NSA leaks, they aren’t comfortable with airing their opinions about the agency on Facebook. 86 per cent of Americans surveyed said they were happy to discuss it in person, but only 42 percent of Twitter and Facebook users would post it online.
There have been other studies to back the fear that government surveillance programs are stifling freedom of expression and one study has also found to be instilling fear in that people “might stop visiting certain websites or not say certain things just to avoid seeming
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Adrian Shahbaz head of research for Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net project told The Washington Post with Bloomberg: “The trend in Russia is going in the direction of China, of preventing government criticism online”. Shabaz said, if adopted, the law will “lead to greater self-censorship as users become all too aware that security agencies can readily access their online data for an extended period of time.”
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The rise of Google and other platforms forces people everywhere to wonder what's more important: protection of information through censorship, or the freedom
This censorship has increased over many platforms of media and technology, allowing humans to think less for themselves. Along,
Censorship in America is often debated. Erin Manning, texas-based writer explains that the American Library Association chooses to censor certain books because of “inappropriate content” and “second rate writing”(Manning 1). Parents attempt to protect their children from the outside world, by limiting their exposure to age appropriate language. When parents do this, their children’s knowledge of the outside world may be limited to what parents let their child view. Although some parents may feel that their child needs filtered information and entertainment, others believe that children and teens need to be shown uncensored content.
She provides examples of how social media has influenced the world, both positively and negatively. The author refers to social media’s role in social uprisings: “In the revolution in Egypt to overthrow Hosni Mubarak, Facebook connected and united protestors so well that one Egyptian couple named their new baby “Facebook” as a show of gratitude to the site’s positive impact” (Evans 2). In this instance social media was an especially helpful and productive tool for the protestors to use. Often sites like tumblr and Facebook are quicker to provide information about breaking news; however, the speed of these sites becomes an issue in some cases. For example Evans mentions the website Reddit and how its users tried to identify one of the Boston bombers, but ended up accusing the wrong man.
Censorship is dangerous, and too much of it can lead to an inevitable destruction of our
Gallington, Daniel J. "The Case for Internet Surveillance." U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News & World Report, 18 Sept. 2013. Web. 03 Mar. 2017.
There is a general belief among social media detractors that this form of communication is dehumanizing. People who spend all of their time updating their social media platforms with 140 characters of thought will fail to recognize the nuance of a real issue. It is common for a person with a potentially controversial stance to be completely dehumanized by social media lynch mobs, who do not care about the nuances of his message, rather, simply want his/her life destroyed for daring to oppose the mainstream narrative. Whether the goals of this opposition are good or bad, their message is often contained within a social media bubble where the nuances are completely missed. This leads to arguments on social media that completely miss people’s real points and instead engage in fallacious arguments that wander off topic (Miller,
This completely takes away a person’s right to privacy. The government has access search anyone’s internet or library records. Taking away someone’s right to read what they please also takes away the freedom of writing about controversial topics since anyone who reads it is intimidated by the government (Jacobs and
Surveillance is becoming increasingly integrated into human lives. Seemingly inconsequential minutiae like how long one spends in line at a grocery store or how many times a headline is clicked on a social media site are collected automatically by both public and private institutions. Whatever we do and wherever we go, there is likely some trace of it. This has led to great debates about the right to privacy, how much surveillance is too much, and under what circumstances surveillance is justifiable. Film and Television play important roles in these debates and in the way in which the public conceptualizes the utility and threat of surveillance more generally.
Censorship can be described as the act of cutting out certain material that can be considered obscene or inconvenient for the community. This material can be found in social media such as in the TV, radio, or the internet. Censorship can be challenged because of the first amendment: freedom of speech. Free expression is the right of expressing opinions and ideas without any fear of being restrained or censored. However, freedom of speech does not include the right to incite actions that would harm others or the distribution of obscene material (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, 2000).
Her argument goes on claiming how Facebook has made us more wary of real human confrontation, and how the network’s audience has become afraid of being caught in the act of avoiding confrontation. Mathias supports this when she uses the example of one of her friends losing it when she heard of a hacker application for Facebook that would expose who’s been searching who, making everyone know of a love interest she had been “stalking.” Mathias argues how we have managed to fear real interaction by cowering behind online. She concludes stating that Facebook is another form of
These government bodies were created to maintain a so called "cyberspace sovereignty" controlled by the State. The main topic of controversy among the internet landscape of China is its strict limitations and restrictions on content deemed sensitive. Any content found to be incompatible with State propaganda, protest against key political figures or ideologies held by China's one party system will be swiftly censored by both well-oiled automated computers
According to Zizi Papacharissi in "The virtual sphere: The internet as a public sphere" web technology has the capacity for reestablishing the public sphere, giving the global public the possibility of freely and equally debate various issues. The problem that Papacharissi points to is the instead of promoting a new and equal behavioral patterns, it seems that the global capitalistic trend is still highly influential with the internet following it. For Papacharissi, the conditions for the constitution of a public sphere do not depend only on technology, but also on its users and owners. In did today's technology allows more people to engage in politics but this is still not sufficient, in Papacharissi's view, the reestablish the public sphere.
Furthermore, in many developing countries or in those with oppressive regimes, government actions are more important than the Internet in defining how information is produced and consumed, and by whom. There are so many counties that use strict censorship in their media. “Present-day examples include Russia as a territorially shrunken successor state to the former USSR, China and North Korea” (Höchli, 2010). Censorship in North Korea is known to be the most intense among the world. With a government such as theirs, they are able to take strict control over communications.
Agencies watch the things we post in order to catch criminals and make sure terrorists have little control in convincing. Now this can be a good thing but if the power goes to far it could be a violation of our rights and privacy. Which goes against the constitution. The government should have limits to how much power they have on the internet for the safety and rights of our people. A good thing is to realize what rights we have on the internet and watch what we post.