censorship

Nouvelle enquête : médias, Internet et censure en Iran

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Une enquête unique a été conduite sur un échantillon de 1022 citoyens iraniens par une équipe de chercheurs de l’Iran Media Program (Annenberg School of Communications de l’Université de Pennsylvanie) en collaboration avec Gallup. Le rapport final Finding a Way – How Iranians reach for news and information est disponible en ligne. Voilà quelques résultats saillants :

1) Les médias traditionnels (mélangés avec des liens forts “de proximité”) restent les sources d’information majoritaires : la télévision est le premier choix pour 96% des interviewés. La chaîne d’état IRIB demeure la plus regardée (62%), suivie par BBC Persian et Voice of America (accessibles par satellite). La presse suit, mais avec un écart important (45%). Peux après, l’information directe par les pairs, les amis, les voisins, les membres de la famille (38%). Avec ces derniers, on peut supposer que certains échanges se réalisent en ligne – par mail, chat ou sur des médias sociaux (mais ce résultat est mitigé, v. point 2). D’autant plus que la recherche d’information dans des lieux publics (transports, commerces, lieux de culte, etc.) n’est plus vraiment d’actualité à cause du climat politique actuel.

http://iranmediaresearch.org/en/research/pdffile/990

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Would online censorship be effective? Evidence from two research projects proves the opposite

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Hi,
you’ve probably reached this blog after listening to my interview with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio Canada’s programme Q. In case you missed it, here’s the podcast:

In this post, you’ll find some background information about my ongoing research on internet censorship – mainly in collaboration with Paola Tubaro (University of Greenwich, UK) and other colleagues. Our focus is on unintended and negative effects of censorship, based on analyses of social media use conducted in the last few years.

In my latest book Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité? [Digital Relationships. Towards a New Sociability?, Paris, Seuil, 2010] I dealt with the topic of pro-ana (short for “pro-anorexia”) and pro-mia (“pro-bulimia”) websites, blogs and forums of persons with eating disorders. The most controversial among them have gone as far as to claim that eating disorders are a choice or a lifestyle, rather than conditions. A grant from the French National Research Agency (ANR) allowed me and my colleagues to lauch ANAMIA, a large-scale study on eating disorder-oriented online communities.

ANAMIA research project – featured on Boing Boing

Since the early 2000s, fears that these websites may induce unhealthy behaviours (possibly in young and adolescent viewers), have prompted many web services to remove them, while some countries have considered outlawing them. Yet eating-disorder related Web communities continue to proliferate. They have migrated to more hidden platforms, barred entry to outsiders, concealed their true nature, and relocated in foreign countries. In a previous post published on Bodyspacesociety blog, I have dubbed this the “toothpaste tube effect“: squeezed from one service, controversial contents re-group elsewhere. Paradoxically, censorship multiplies these websites – if only because of the urge to duplicate contents for backup purposes, in case they have to shut down and move!


Mapping pro-ED websites (France, 2010-2012) – ANAMIA research project

Today, these websites are less open and less visible, though still numerous and densely connected with one another. Thus, they can still influence their users, just as before; but it has become harder for health and nutrition campaigns to locate them and reach out to their users.

Our results indicate that Internet censorship is ineffective and inefficient: it has failed to stop “negative” influences, and has made it more difficult for “positive” influences to operate.

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Et in Athenis ego: update on ongoing research on the body + riots

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I know I should be in Lyon for the www12 conference with all the Internet big shots, but instead I’m taking a plane and heading to Greece. The opportunity came via an invitation to deliver a speech at the New Sensorium, an international symposium that will take place on April 20-21 at the BIOS, in Athens. If you are around, you should definitely attend! The conference deals with some of my main research foci (digital technologies, media and the body) and it is the outcome of a collaboration between the Department of Communication, Media and Culture of Panteion University and the McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto (I was their guest a few months ago).

http://entopia.org/newsensorium/

The New Sensorium symposium – BIOS, Athens (20-21 April 2012)

Just so you know my speech carries the somewhat cryptic title The Virus and the Avatar. Ways of socializing the sensible in computer culture – and if you don’t have a clue of what it’s about, here are two texts in Greek and in English that might be of help.

But this Athens trip will also be the chance to do more than a bit of field research for our ongoing ICCU (Internet Censorship and Civil Unrest) project. You might remember the project was kickstarted by this blog post about last year’s UK riots.

http://owni.fr/2011/08/19/censure-reseaux-sociaux-londres-cameron-ukriots/

…also in French

Our research received a lot of attention and eventually became a working paper, then an article coming up in the Bulletin of Sociological Methodology and started a number of prospective spin-offs in other nations. The Athens one is based on the idea of studying media and internet use during the Greek 2010-12 protests (and the way they are linked with the 2008 riots). Won’t go into details because I don’t want to spoil the party. But, if I manage to grasp a little wifi, I might be blogging a postcard or two from my Athenian fieldwork.

Banning pro-ana websites? Not a good idea, as Web censorship might have a 'toothpaste tube effect'

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[Update 05.04.13: A longer version of this post, with revised results, has evolved into a full-fledged article published by the UK Royal Society. To cite the article: A. A. Casilli, F. Pailler, P. Tubaro (2013). Online networks of eating disorder websites: why censoring pro ana might be a bad idea, Perspectives in Public Health , vol. 133, n.2, p. 94 95. As part of our research project ANAMIA (Ana-mia Sociability: an Online/Offline Social Networks Approach to Eating Disorders), the post has been featured in a number of media venues, including The Economist, Libération, Le Monde, Boing Boing, The Huffingtonpost, CBC Radio Canada, DRadio Wissen, Voice of Russia.]

Tumblr, Pinterest and the toothpaste tube

On February 23rd, 2012 Tumblr announced its decision to turn the screw on self-harm blogs: suicide, mutilation and most prominently thinspiration – i.e. the ritualized exchange of images and quotes meant to inspire readers to be thin. This cultural practice is distinctive of the pro-ana (anorexia nervosa), pro-mia (bulimia) and pro-ED (eating disorders) groups online: blogs, forums, and communities created by people suffering from eating-related conditions, who display a proactive stance and critically abide by medical advice.

http://staff.tumblr.com/post/18132624829/self-harm-blogs

A New Policy Against Self-Harm Blogs | Tumblr Staff

A righteous limitation of harmful contents or just another way to avoid liability by marginalizing a stigmatized subculture? Whatever your opinion, it might not come as a surprise that the disbanded pro-ana Tumblr bloggers are regrouping elsewhere. Of all places, they are surfacing on Pinterest, the up-and-coming photo-sharing site. Here’s how Sociology in Focus relates the news: (more…)

Some modest remarks on the role of citizen lobbying in defeating #SOPA

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So apparently SOPA is dead, for now. If you’ve been following the recent events surrounding this infamous anti-piracy (and anti-free speech) law, you know that’s good news for a lot of people – me included. The way this thing will go down in history is pretty much that “an iniquitous piece of legislation was to be voted, but a 7 million-strong Google petition, a rally in San Francisco and a massive online campaign (including a spectacular 24-hour blackout) defeated it”. Unfortunately, this means downplaying the role of another important element of this story: lobbying.

If you are not aware of how US lobbying works (or, worse, if you are European), let me break it down for you. Lobbying basically means talking to the right persons and influence them in following a certain political line. Sometimes this line is instantiated by a clear gain in terms of funding for politicians – to be used to be re-elected, to promote new policies, public works programmes, or political activity in general. Government resources are scarse, so this keeps the machine running, although in some cases it borders on buying votes. Telecommunication and electronics companies are among the biggest “buyers”.

Communication and electronics sector displays one of the highest and fastest increasing lobbying spending. Source: Sunlight Foundation

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Online censorship in Berluscoland: even Wikipedia goes on strike!

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You can tell that in a nation the cultural and political situation has reached a height of obscurantism when even encyclopedias go on strike. That’s right, encyclopedias… the pure product of Enlightenment, over the centuries the reference for theorists of modern democratic thought, go on strike in that xenophobic kleptocracy that goes under the name of Italian Republic. This is the press release just published on the Italian Wikipedia. Be scared. Be very scared.

Dear reader,
at this time, the Italian language Wikipedia may be no longer able to continue providing the service that over the years was useful to you, and that you expected to have right now. As things stand, the page you want still exists and is only hidden, but the risk is that soon we will be forced to actually delete it.

The Bill – Rules on Wiretapping etc., p. 24, letter a) states that:

«For the Internet sites, including newspapers and periodicals delivered by telematic way, the statements or corrections are published, with the same graphic characteristics, the same access methodology to the site and the same visibility of the news which they refer.»

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