Censorship and Disinformation

 Book Riot continues its series on censorship with WHAT IS PUBLISHING DOING TO COMBAT CENSORSHIP?.

Kelly Jensen identifies the root of the problem: white supremacy and power. This also manifests in the failure to include materials in a collection, either because they go against the gatekeepers’ beliefs or because they are afraid of backlash. In cases such as either of these, censorship wins out in advance.

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Some of the most transformative action can happen when publishing houses work together, and with other organizations like nonprofits. Unite Against Book Bans, a national initiative formed by the American Library Association, counts a number of publishers, including MacMillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, and Sourcebooks, as organizational partners. The initiative has put together a toolkit with the goal of arming individuals with the knowledge necessary to fight book bans, breaking the information down into sections: Talking Points, Contact Decision Makers, Grassroots Organizing, and more.

 Aeon published On the moral responsibility to be an informed citizen:

But all this does not mean that citizens should not be encouraged to do what they can. It is prudent to stay mindful of the sources of online information, pause to consider the context, bias or the satirical nature of a story before sharing, and to check the publication date. Disinformation is especially effective when repeated often, so it’s good to try to remain critical of especially outlandish content encountered multiple times. And while there is great concern over deepfake technology, still much more ubiquitous are ‘cheapfake’ videos, which create manipulations by conventional editing techniques. Reverse image searches can also reveal suspicious sources for specific images.

I think disinformation leads to censorship. I disagree a bit with the last write  - democratic government requires an informed electorate. Censorship and misinformation undermine democracy by limiting and distorting the information needed for the electorate to govern itself.

sch 7/30/22