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Failure of political governance is commonplace in Fiji where lack of media freedom, democratic bargaining, political transparency, and accountability has led to political dysfunction and political strife, including military coups, suppression of rights of journalists and media organisations, suspension of freedom of expression, lack of democratic accountability, including draconian media rules and laws that encourage media self-censorship and political oversight over media content. Democratic deficit theory highlights that so-called democratic governments such as Fiji fall short of fulfilling the principles of democracy in their practices and operation because of its history of suppressing media rights, including fundamental freedoms of citizens to express themselves freely. Under such circumstances, Fiji citizens have taken to social media, especially after the 2006 military coup as the future of media freedom remains uncertain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentary: This article discusses the status of media freedom in the Pacific region and the impact of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. It primarily draws on informed comments made by experienced Pacific journalists during an online discussion in December 2021. Further, it updates the situation in several Pacific countries, based on reflections made by the same journalists in March 2023. There have been two major developments in 2023: the newly elected government in Fiji has repealed the country's controversial media law while the government of Papua New Guinea considers introducing a media law. The article highlights the importance of ongoing vigilance with regard to media freedom in Pacific Island countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can authorities effectively shut down widely used social media platforms? This article theorizes that banning social media platforms with existing user bases triggers the psychological mechanism of reactance. Reactance motivates citizens to circumvent bans and ultimately results in intensified criticism of the censoring authorities on banned platforms. Reactance dynamics in response to social media bans are particularly relevant in countries with hybrid regimes – that is, regimes with both democratic and autocratic characteristics. Authorities in these countries generally allow widespread adoption of social media platforms. At the same time, they engage in temporary platform bans, usually to limit antiregime discourse at crucial political junctures such as elections. This combination of large user bases and temporary bans creates a "reactance equilibrium" in which there is high demand among citizens to access the restricted platforms. Unlike with censorship of traditional media such as television and print news outlets, the costs for citizens to circumvent social media bans are relatively low, which allows citizens to act on their reactance states. Drawing on a dataset of 15 million geolocated tweets, this article presents evidence of a censorship backlash to Turkey's March 2014 Twitter ban, which is considered among the first attempts to block a widely adopted social media platform. A synthetic control model and descriptive statistics reveal widespread circumvention of the ban. Furthermore, sentiment analysis shows that, in the wake of the ban, Twitter discourse became increasingly negative, especially toward the ban's main progenitor then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although media capture is a global issue, it is a particularly significant problem in sub-Saharan African countries like Ghana. Media capture occurs when media organisations become incapable of performing critical watchdog functions, such as fighting corruption and human rights violations, because of pressures from capital and power. This article addresses a fundamental question: In Ghana's Fourth Republic, what role do social accountability actors play in resisting media capture by capital and power? I argue that social accountability actors perform three essential, interrelated roles: (1) defending media freedoms and independence, (2) activating and facilitating the media's work and (3) legitimising and encouraging critical journalism. In doing so, they use a combination of strategies – from advocacy, denunciation and legal action to establishing and funding non-profit media outlets to do investigative journalism. This work extends the literature by examining the crucial role social accountability actors play in counteracting media capture so that critical journalism can do its job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definitions of impunity regarding crimes against journalists have thus far been too narrow. Therefore, we propose a new approach to understanding impunity as also being grounded in journalists' lived reality and perceptions to better understand the complexity and breadth of impunity. It is based on the findings obtained through a set of semi-structured interviews with 40 editors and senior journalists in five countries and expressed in a new typology of impunity. We argue that what we call the 'Politics of Impunity' is a policy of governance whereby impunity is used as a political tool by the state and state-sponsored actors to achieve journalistic self-censorship. This is done through the deliberate deprivation of private autonomy brought about by the enforced exile of journalists into a 'space of exception' where they are both within and beyond the law. The exercise of the 'Politics of Impunity' in an increasing number of states creates an environment that only allows for politically compliant journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyzed the role of media regulatory authorities in Pakistan concerning the sensational news broadcasting. As television is a very important medium of mass communication and due to its audio-visual impact, it has the power to influence the viewers because they believe what they see on television. The presentation of news stories affects the public minds and can mold their opinion positively or negatively about any particular issue or happening as assumed in the theory of social responsibility of media. It is found that the media regulatory authorities have so far failed to implement the ethical code of conduct for the control the violation of ethical standards in television news that it negatively effects the public opinion, national interests and global image of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does more media censorship imply more regime stability? We argue that censorship may cause mass disapproval for censoring regimes. In particular, we expect that censorship backfires when citizens can falsify media content through alternative sources of information. We empirically test our theoretical argument in an autocratic regime—the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Results demonstrate how exposed state censorship on the country's emigration crisis fueled outrage in the weeks before the 1989 revolution. Combining original weekly approval surveys on GDR state television and daily content data of West German news programs with a quasi‐experimental research design, we show that recipients disapproved of censorship if they were able to detect misinformation through conflicting reports on Western television. Our findings have important implications for the study of censoring systems in contemporary autocracies, external democracy promotion, and campaigns aimed at undermining trust in traditional journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pervasive media censorship in China is often seen as a strictly political issue. Although in past years reporters have had leeway to report on economic issues, the Chinese Party/state has moved to tamp down economic journalism, even arresting those who report on bad economic news. This shift brings to the fore an issue long ignored by social scientists – economic censorship. Economic censorship takes place when state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or large private companies pressure the state to censor negative reports or directly pay off media companies to quash such reports in favor of more positive ones. Such economic censorship distorts markets and shifts investor money away from new market entrants and towards large, well-resourced and well-connected SOEs. Using a database of Chinese newspaper articles from 2004 to 2006 and a separate database of newspaper articles, blog posts and micro-blog posts from 2010, and supplemented by secondary sources, this paper examines how media coverage is distorted by censorship and corruption to the benefit of China's entrenched interests. In particular, I find that private and provincially owned companies receive much more press coverage than do their central government (SASAC) owned equivalents, controlling for a number of factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. and Australian media vehicles are not required to publish or broadcast every commercial advertising message submitted. To the contrary, owners and managers ate free to designate anyone's message as unacceptable, and, in fact, they do so, for many reasons. Building on the research literature on U.S. business practices, this paper reports results of depth interviews with Australian media managers on their approaches to deciding what advertising materials to accept or reject. The U.S.-based literature provides the basis for a model that illustrates the influences on media vehicles' decisions, and Australian managers' responses indicate that it readily applies in their country as well. Overall, similar to U.S. practices, the single most important reason for rejection of advertisements in Australia is a breach of taste, although Australian vehicle managers more readily and visibly assert deference to the judgment of their more numerous and active trade associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media censorship is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. We conduct a field experiment in China to measure the effects of providing citizens with access to an uncensored internet. We track subjects' media consumption, beliefs regarding the media, economic beliefs, political attitudes, and behaviors over 18 months. We find four main results: (i) free access alone does not induce subjects to acquire politically sensitive information; (ii) temporary encouragement leads to a persistent increase in acquisition, indicating that demand is not permanently low; (iii) acquisition brings broad, substantial, and persistent changes to knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and intended behaviors; and (iv) social transmission of information is statistically significant but small in magnitude. We calibrate a simple model to show that the combination of low demand for uncensored information and the moderate social transmission means China's censorship apparatus may remain robust to a large number of citizens receiving access to an uncensored internet. (JEL C93, D72, D83, L82, L86, L88, P36) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reassesses the relationships of the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense with the American entertainment industry. Both governmental institutions present their relationships as modest in scale, benign in nature, passive, and concerned with historical and technical accuracy rather than politics. The limited extant commentary reflects this reassuring assessment. However, we build on a patchy reassessment begun at the turn of the 21st century, using a significant new set of documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. We identify three key facets of the state-entertainment relationship that are under-emphasized or absent from the existing commentary and historical record: 1. The withholding of available data from the public; 2. The scale of the work; and 3. The level of politicization. As such, the article emphasizes a need to pay closer attention to the deliberate propaganda role played by state agencies in promoting the US national security state through entertainment media in western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the effects of media censorship and dissidence in Malaysia within the context of gay men and pornography, and how these oft-considered taboo subjects intersect within the society. Malaysia's media landscape has revealed many flaws in the country's political and social environment. The place of gay men and pornography within this media landscape is examined through interviews with gay Malaysian men. It frames the intersection of politics and private lives through the lenses of sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas, feminist Carol Hanisch, psychologist Todd G. Morrison and sociologist Jeffrey Weeks. An analysis of selected interviews reveals that within the Malaysian media landscape, pornography surpasses the realm of pleasure, and is a form of dissent and discreet protest against the regulation of sexual lives. The stigmatisation of pornography and pervasive homophobic rhetoric has allowed these sexy media dissidents to perform new connections, foster self-awareness and move toward increasing political and sexual freedom and subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1983, elections in Argentina ended one of the bloodiest dictatorships in Latin America (1976-83), and once the elected president Rau'l Alfonsın took office, Argentines rejoiced in a democratic spring. The destape was the most explosive cultural trend in the return to democracy, emerging timidly in 1981 as the military grew weaker but remained in power and gaining momentum between 1983 and 1987. Destapar means to take the lid off, uncover, expose, and the destape was, in fact, an avalanche of sexual images and narratives. This article considers the censorship and repression of sexual content in the media during the dictatorship and examines the destape as a large-scale media phenomenon that amplified sexual explicitness to a historically unrivaled degree. The essay demonstrates that for most Argentines the destape was a metaphor for democracy, freedom, modernity, national adulthood, self-expression, and the exuberant enjoyment of life. While the article focuses mostly on celebratory meanings, it also briefly examines the positions of ultra-Catholics and of feminists, who, from very different perspectives, raised the most critical voices against the destape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much medical journal literature is developed by the pharmaceutical and device industries, sometimes with assistance from marketing agencies, writers, and academics. This literature is vulnerable to commercial bias. The publications trade issues self-regulatory ethical guidelines for its production, called "Good Publication Practice" (GPP). I evaluated the most recent iteration, GPP3. The most progressive recommendations in GPP3 call for complete publication of all clinical trials, and full data sharing. GPP3 makes numerous further recommendations more directly concerning the publications trade. Many of these repeat existing editorial requirements, chiefly those of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, but readers are not adequately advised of this. Despite its emphasis on ethical and transparent reporting, the detail of GPP3 enables continued use of academic medical literature for drug marketing, on the basis of commercial steerage of content, coupled with the attribution of published articles to collaborating academic authors. As such, GPP3 provides a de facto manual for how marketing through academic journal content can be conducted in compliance with contemporary editorial standards. Consequently, the self-regulatory GPP3 guidelines are not a sound basis for the production of unbiased industry-financed medical journal literature. I suggest improvements for future iterations of these influential guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Singapore is often represented as an example of a successful "postcolonial" society that transitioned into a developed nation and economy. The government articulates its reliance on enlightenment ideals such as reason and meritocracy, separation of church and state, and equality; but at the same time draws its legitimacy from articulations of "tradition" based on "ethnicity" and "culture." These contradictions extend to censorship, particularly since the state actively censors the media when it comes to issues of race and religion whenever they threaten to disrupt the appearance of equality, while selectively using repackaged "Asian values" to justify their interventions. To convolute matters further, critics and academics often employ quasi-Western concepts of "freedom of expression" to critique state censorship. So, what underlying assumptions do these various representations articulate? And how do these rival articulations relate to the ways censorship work in practice? Drawing on ethnographic materials obtained during an intensive 15-month fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2013, this article aims to complicate dominant conceptualisations of censorship by shifting its focus onto situated practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the Chinese socialist media censorship system was established and operated without losing legitimacy at the local level in 1950s Shanghai, and why media workers complied with the censorship in daily journalistic practice. Under the strong influence of the liberal model of media in the West that assumes the relations between the state and media as antagonistic and often reduces state-media relations to a struggle between the state repression and media compliance/resistance, media or media workers in the PRC are portrayed either as victims of the strict and repressive media censorship without much agency or as ready to resist censorship whenever possible. This research demonstrates that media workers complied with the censorship procedure because they saw it as a process of legitimization of the news reporting and commentaries in the absence of formal institutions for media censorship and heavy reliance on self-censorship in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature claims that China censors information that has the potential to ignite collective action. This article extends this finding by arguing that Chinese censors respond differently to political challenges than they do to performance challenges. Political challenges call into questioning the Party's leading role, whereas performance challenges are directed at the failures of public goods provisions. A survey experiment of about 60 media professionals finds that censors are inclined to block political challenges and to tolerate criticism of the government's performance. However, when criticism contains both performance and political challenges, censorship is far more likely. By exploring the range of censorship activities, the results suggest that the Chinese regime's reliance on popular support constrains its censorship decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twitter data are becoming an important part of modern political science research, but key aspects of the inner workings of Twitter streams as well as self-censorship on the platform require further research. A particularly important research agenda is to understand removal rates of politically charged tweets. In this article, I provide a strategy to understand removal rates on Twitter, particularly on politically charged topics. First, the technical properties of Twitter’s API that may distort the analyses of removal rates are tested. Results show that the forward stream does not capture every possible tweet –between 2 and 5 percent of tweets are lost on average, even when the volume of tweets is low and the firehose not needed. Second, data from Twitter’s streams are collected on contentious topics such as terrorism or political leaders and non-contentious topics such as types of food. The statistical technique used to detect uncommon removal rate patterns is multilevel analysis. Results show significant differences in the removal of tweets between different topic groups. This article provides the first systematic comparison of information loss and removal on Twitter as well as a strategy to collect valid removal samples of tweets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a great deal of debate around the subject of censorship. Whether new or controversial ideas are coming from the internet, movies or books they can influence our worldview. When people congregate in groups, rules of etiquette are established and those who wish to participate in the group must abide by those rules. The government also establishes codes of conduct and requires its citizens to abide by those codes in order to fully participate in society. Censorship is used to embargo certain information for the "greater good" of society. While there is a tendency for the press in Western democracies to complain about restrictions in China, the research in this paper shows that Western democratic governments have a history of using censorship in a similar fashion to that of the Chinese government. Whether it is Hitchcock developing his art under the meticulous eye of regulators, or a time-traveling gender-swapping princess trying to survive on the Chinese internet, censors control what information and entertainment may be consumed by the citizens they "serve." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author considers that the role of mass media in armed confrontations is complex and debated especially among those who work in the field of communication and public relations, as well as among political and military decision-makers, the debates being generated by different interests and responsibilities. Moreover, throughout history, because of the media's power of influencing people in wartime, politicians imposed restrictions on freedom of speech in the mass media, phenomenon known as censorship. Currently, the internet and social media have become the most important challenges for politicians and military commanders during wartime. In addition, mass media is one of the most important and powerful weapon the military commanders have in their arsenal, influencing the way of waging war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the twenty first century, television journalism has witnessed immense development and transformation. News agencies have emerged as global 24-hours news outlets. The news values and traditions have undergone considerable change making revenues generation a top priority. This was consequential upon using language and other semiotic resources like visuals and sound for incorporating entertainment, sensationalism, suspense and informality in news. Through these techniques viewers could be attracted and higher rating figures could be achieved. The broadcast news media industry of Pakistan has developed a lot after the 2002 media reforms under Musharraf's regime. Vast changes have also been observed in both the style and contents of broadcast news. This research study focuses on increasing trend of infotainment in Pakistani broadcast news. Using the perspectives of linguistic and semiotic analysis, this study has documented that nowadays information is very much mixed with entertainment techniques to make news interesting, sensational and appealing for viewers. This reflects that the broadcast journalism has become profit oriented and therefore all possible resources are exploited to tailor a news discourse which is tinged with subtle infotainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate how the Chinese government extends its influence to manipulate extra-jurisdictional media, this case study investigates Taiwan's experience. It suggests that as Taiwanese media companies become embedded in the Chinese capital, advertising, and circulation markets, the Chinese authorities increase their ability to co-opt them with various economic incentives and threats, leading to self-censorship and biased news in favour of China. Using process tracing as the principal method, and archives, interviews, and secondary literature as principal data sources, the study supports the transferability of the "commercialisation of censorship" beyond China. Liberal states around China must design institutions protecting the media from inappropriate intervention by both domestic and foreign political and economic forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. In the following analysis, we investigate the determinants of government efforts to censor media. We develop and test a new theory that argues executive-level corruption influences when governments are more likely to attempt media censorship. After modeling the media-government dynamic in game form, we utilize the new Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset to empirically test this relationship on both traditional media (print and broadcast) and new media (Internet). Using panel, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with a lagged dependent variable and country fixed effects, we examine the relationship from 1960 to 2015 for traditional media and from 1993 to 2015 for new media. The results suggest that as governments become more corrupt, governmental efforts to censor both forms of media are likely to increase. We further examine the relationship among different world regions and regime types; we find overall confirmation of our hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the complex media environment of urban Zambia based on qualitative interviews with 42 active ICT and social media users in Lusaka. After a contextual discussion of media censorship and Internet freedom, the article draws upon interview data to delineate four circumvention practices: (1) platform jumping; (2) anonymity; (3) self-censorship; and (4) negotiation of legal challenges. Rather than approach circumvention as a set of techniques disseminated from the information capitals of the world to those in the “global south,” this study approaches it as a set of cultural practices that emerges within particular sociohistorical conditions and platforms of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the developments in digital journalism in Cuba as of June 2017. Topics include the Cuban government's monopoly on print and broadcast media, the threat posed by Internet access to politics, and the history of several web sites. These web sites include one by Yoani Sánchez, another by Elaine Díaz, and one by Pedro Enrique Rodríguez. Also discussed are the possibility that Internet access will expand in the country if its relationship with the U.S. will be normalized and how citizens can help shape their society and their future.

When the intellectual history of the Republic of Turkey is examined through its political and press interactions, it sheds light on the fact that the 1940s was a gloomy environment but with a dense vividness and diversity with regard to mass media and communication affairs. The main factor for that could be escalating political pressure and censorship imposed on the mass media, even resulting in close-downs, a situation which was quite in contrast with the striking increase in newspapers/periodicals being published during those years. The24 Saat, which is the main subject of our study, was a newspaper published for only 13 days by Mediha Berkes, who was forced to resign her post as a teacher in the sociology department of the Faculty of Language, History and Geography in Ankara. In this frame, the main aim of this research is to investigate intellectual considerations at the time of24 Saatnewspaper which entered into the Turkish intellectual and press history in 1947, as well as its owner Mediha Berkes in the context of the political and social developments of that decade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This Article identifies a new front in the current war against the media—one in which billionaire private actors clandestinely fund other people’s lawsuits in an attempt to censor press entities. The use of strategic litigation to shutter media outlets constitutes a major threat to the expressive order. And the current climate of press failures, institutional disaggregation, decreasing accountability journalism, and declining public trust—the very vulnerability of the press today—significantly amplifies the chilling impact of strategic third-party funding. It does so whether the strategy is death-by-a-thousand-litigations or titanic, bankruptcy-inducing damage verdicts. Still, contrary to the assertions of both funders and their opponents, finding an appropriate response to these developments is far from easy under current law. It is neither realistic nor constitutionally palatable to prohibit third-party funding in media cases. Such funding can play a valuable role by ensuring that even penurious individuals can vindicate viable claims against media organizations. Yet existing champerty and maintenance jurisprudence cannot adequately address the problem. A richer, more multivalent approach is called for. In that spirit, this Article proposes a realistic four-pronged strategy: (1) judicial discretion to order disclosure of third-party funding in discovery; (2) waiver or reduction of appeal bonds in third-party-funded media cases where such bonds would effectively make verdicts against the media unappealable; (3) development of counter-funding strategies and support of third-party-funding watchdogs; and (4) consideration of a litigation misuse claim against third-party funders in cases where their support is designed to shutter press outlets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists have faced increasing challenges as the result of police forces in different regions switching to digital radio communications. Drawing on gatekeeping theory and the journalistic practices literature, interviews with non-routine news journalists and a content analysis of news stories in newspapers were conducted to illustrate non-routine news coverage and understand how reporters' routines have changed. The results suggest that police forces' ability to control information technologically reduces the amount of non-routine news coverage and changes the ways in which news sources are used. Journalists have had to alter their reporting routines to retain journalistic independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government restrictions on reporting war and conflict have been the subject of much public and historic debate in two world wars and ever since. This article explores government press censorship in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel during the late 1960s and early 1970s, in respect of international media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict. By examining the work of the Reuters news agency, the important international provider of media information, it assesses the impact on foreign reporting of government prepublication censoring systems and other forms of press restriction. It demonstrates that formal censoring of news became an increasingly hard task due to the availability and incessant development of alternative routes of news transfer. Nevertheless, it also shows that restrictions on press access and news gathering remained effectual, as did the general need to stay on terms with governments, especially in authoritarian states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the federal government controlled the Japanese “enemy language” newspapers in Japanese American “relocation centers” during World War II. Camp officials were facing a dilemma: They knew Japanese news media would promote effective information dissemination, but no one understood the language. As a compromising solution, they limited Japanese contents to verbatim translations of official English releases. They also conducted thorough background examinations of translators to sort out “unquestionably loyal” bilingual Japanese. Press freedom inside the barbed wire fences was conditional at best; it was even more so in the enemy’s language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]