Censorship

By Siji, Caitlin and Phuong

Our Data Visualisation

• Displays internet censorship on a global level.• Presents the primary categories of censorship

and the scale/size of censored issues in different areas.

• Presents the history of censorship in the form of a timeline of key events.

Internet Censorship • The colour of the circles represents classifications of censorship, according to

OpenNet Initiative. They are done for four areas of activity:

• Political: Views and information in opposition to those of the current government or related to human rights, freedom of expression, minority rights, and religious movements.

• Social: Views and information perceived as offensive or as socially sensitive, often related to sexuality, gambling, or illegal drugs and alcohol.

• Conflict/security: Views and information related to armed conflicts, border disputes, separatist movements, and militant groups.

• Internet tools: e-mail, Internet hosting, search, translation, and Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, and censorship or filtering circumvention methods.

• The size of these circles also represents the magnitude or level of censorship. For example, larger circles imply a more pervasive portion of content is blocked; smaller circles imply a substantial or selective situation of the country/area.

Timeline of key events in censorship

• 443 BC: The office of Censor is created in the Roman Republic.

398 BC: A the height of the Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes produces his satire Lysistrata, the parliament of women.

1235: The Inquisition is established by Pope Gregory IX to patrol and enforce the orthodoxy of the Christian faith.

1641: Under the recently established Tokugawa dynasty, Japan enacts rigid laws designed to maintain peace.

1667: In Paris, a new magistracy is created, the General Lieutenant of Police.

1909: Establishment of the British Board of Film Censors. They were quick.

1988: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

2005: Network Neutrality

Limitations…

• Locating data that represented the accurate percentage of each category of censorship (i.e political, social etc.) proved to be quite difficult.

• In retrospect, it is not suprising that finding these figures was hard – as the data is censored.

Censorship by country (wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_country

An example of the unclear data we were facing when trying to research.

• A dentist’s website• A woman that operated tuck shops website• A tour operator’s website• A Queensland boarding kennel website• The Melbourne Free University website

Sites on the ACMA blocked list…