The Censorship Effect

Editors note:Lydia Laurenson is a writer, researcher, and communications professional fascinated by social media and community dynamics. Lydia also served in the U.S. Peace Corps, working with the HIV program in Swaziland, Africa.

The 29-year-old founder of VKontakte, Russias largest social network, just gotfiredand left the country. That is, Pavel Durovdescribed himself as fired, although there were previous rustlings ofresignation.

Durovs departure was accompanied by much commentary about the censorship climate in Russia. He himself announced that he plans to create a new social network, and that he moved because the country is incompatible with Internet business at the moment. This comes right on the heels of the U.S. IPO for Sina Weibo, a social platform thats sometimes called Chinas Twitter. Mashable recently reported that when Sina Weibo filed its IPO, it describedChinese censorship specifically as a risk factor.

How much does censorship affect digital media from a business perspective? Ive recently been researching cross-cultural social media while working on some articles for OReilly Media. Unsurprisingly, its clear that censorship has a huge impact on how social platforms develop and on how individuals use them. Some of the specific effects of censorship can be surprising, though.

Ethan Zuckerman, the director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and other experienced commentators have arguedthat censorship can actually strengthen dissent when very popular sites get taken down. For example, a person who only visits YouTube for cat videos will be alerted that something big has gone wrong if YouTube is blocked, even if that person wouldnt normally pay attention to the news.

Ive also heard tales of how censorship and its pal, propaganda, strengthen social media ties.In China, the Internet plays a much deeper role in society because all the normal media is propaganda. You know that whats appearing in state-run media is not objective, but something on the Internet might be, saysThomas Crampton, the global managing director for international marketing agency Ogilvy & Mather.

This is supported by other marketing reports like this onefrom management consulting firm McKinsey, which notes that Chinese consumers value the brand recommendations of friends, family, and social media influencers far more than American consumers do.

However, there are plenty of situations where social media platforms are decimated by censorship. Some data crunching by the Telegraph in the U.K.showed clearlythat last years Chinese war on rumors and more importantly, the wars associated arrests caused Sina Weibo usage to drop off a cliff. No wonder Weibo called censorship a risk factor in its IPO.

The writer and anthropologist Sarah Kendzior, who researches authoritarian states in Eastern Europe, has written thatIn authoritarian states, the circulation of state crimes often serves to confirm tacit suspicions, and in some cases, to reaffirm the futility of the fight. Fear, apathy, cynicism and distrust are as common reactions to these quasi-revelations as are outrage and a desire for change.

What I think is interesting is how much of the authoritarian state mentality people take when they leave the country, Kendzior tells me.I see the same fear and wariness about social media from people who have fled Uzbekistan, as people who are still there. Its very hard to shake off self-censorship.

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The Censorship Effect