Knowledge Base
Explore the main issues covered by AES-451. Each topic brings together explainers, articles, videos and first-hand accounts connected to digital repression and threats to freedom of expression.
Methods of Modern Censorship
Surveillance and Exposure
Method
Surveillance and monitoring are used to observe what people say, who they speak to, what networks they belong to, and what they may publish next.
Platform Manipulation
Method
Platform manipulation uses reporting systems, algorithms, fake accounts, automation and moderation tools to make writers and journalists harder to find, trust or hear.
Digital Access Control
Method
Digital access control limits the ability of writers, journalists and human rights voices to connect, communicate, publish, document events or reach audiences.
Reputation and Professional Pressure
Method
Reputation and professional pressure is used to make writers, journalists and human rights voices appear unreliable, dangerous, immoral, controversial or professionally costly to support.
Weaponising the Diaspora
Method
Weaponising the diaspora refers to the use of family pressure, community networks, rumours, loyalty tests, propaganda and fear to isolate or silence writers and journalists in exile.
Mediated Transnational Repression
Method
Mediated transnational repression uses host-state institutions, venues, publishers, funders, platforms, companies or public authorities as channels through which writers and journalists can be pressured, excluded or silenced.
Legacy Censorship Methods
Method
Legacy censorship methods include book bans, publishing bans, licensing systems, prosecution, imprisonment, exile, violence and other direct forms of repression against expression.
These methods affect writers, journalists, publishers, artists and human rights voices in practical ways. They can make people avoid certain subjects, withdraw from public debate, protect family members by staying silent, remove work, abandon interviews, cancel events, lose access to audiences, or stop publishing under their own name.
Some methods are direct and visible, such as book bans, prosecution, imprisonment or violence. Others are harder to see. They work through surveillance, platform manipulation, smear campaigns, diaspora pressure, funding decisions, venue cancellations or institutional caution.
Repression is often the method. Censorship is the effect. Freedom of expression is what is at stake.
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