Censorship versus Propaganda


With the power of social media continuing to grow with no end in sight, I do believe that state governments are and will increasingly use it to control media narratives as opposed to strict press censorship. The ineffectiveness of press censorship is becoming more and more apparent. Simply shutting down the internet is not enough to stop the flow of information, whether accurate or not. The world and exchange of information has existed for hundreds of years without the internet. Humans have always found a way to communicate, and shutting down the internet will not stop the power of word of mouth. Furthermore, the impact on a country’s GDP by blocking internet access will never be worth the attempted information control. In today’s capitalist society, countries value their economic power more than ever before. Sacrificing a country’s economic power would be more catastrophic to a country than a free flow of information. Riots are more easy to control than a tanked economy. Both of these problems are evident with countries who did shut down their internet to citizens such as India and Kashmir. The article published in The New York Times, “India Shut Down Kashmir’s Internet Access: Now, ‘We Can’t Do Anything’”, reports that India’s internet shutdowns between 2012 and 2017 cost India’s economy more than $3 billion. Furthermore, India’s most recent shutdown of internet in Kashmir, which was done to prevent protests after repealing Kashmir’s autonomous status, did not actually prevent the flow of information. Many people still took to the streets to protest anyways. It mostly had a negative impact on the country, basically stopping it from functioning. Doctors couldn’t order medicine, ATM’s could no longer distribute cash. All city supplies that was normally ordered through the internet became scarce.  

The risks of internet shutdown are too high for countries, as daily life is too dependent on the internet. As a result, I think that governments are relying increasingly on filling the internet with propaganda. Throughout history, propaganda has been an incredibly powerful tool in influencing public opinion. With the wide reach of the internet, it is the perfect place for propaganda to thrive. The Chinese government is currently trying this as they attempt to control the narrative around the Hong Kong protests. As discussed in the article published in Bloomberg, “Propaganda Work Better Than Censorship”, the Chinese government has been trying out different forms of propaganda in order to condemn the pro-democracy Hong Kong protesters. They have shifted to blatant tactics of explicit posts by fake accounts that can easily be banned to a more sophisticated route: producing rap music videos and Trevor Noah-esque comedians/political commentators that support the pro-China regime in a digestible way, that is easy to share and easy to go viral. Currently, China’s state run media have some of the biggest Facebook followings in the world, and is on track to become the most followed Facebook page ever. Their wide reach in combination with their manipulative and well created content will allow their version of information to reach further and deeper into the internet, creating their own dominant version of the truth. 

Governments flooding the internet with propaganda is and will continue to have a negative impact on journalists. By creating this strong propaganda culture online, any journalists that report on anything anti-government will be more susceptible to online harassment and attacks. This can be seen in both Hong Kong, where journalists reporting on the protests were victims of online doxxing and police violence. It can also be seen in the Philippines. The Philippines current President, Rodrigo Duterte, ran a lot of his campaign on Facebook, using propaganda to build a strong following. He promoted his rhetoric to create a war on drugs in order to justify the murders of thousands of Philippinos. An article published by Business Insider discusses how many journalists that were reporting on the President's war on drugs in a negative light where attacked online with death threats, social media hacking and other forms of harassment. These attacks came from the President’s supporters who learned about his campaign on Facebook. This kind of abuse of journalists can lead to journalists beginning to self-censor themselves, simply to protect their safety. This can impact the truthfulness of journalism and impact the sharing of information that is more important than ever before. Beyond the safety of journalism, internet propaganda and manipulation will make it harder for readers to distinguish what's propaganda from what is factual reporting. This could create a strong distrust among the public in journalism if it is impossible to distinguish the real from the fake.


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