How_Censorship_Forms_a_Negative_Social_Bias-1

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1 How Censorship Forms a Negative Social Bias Michael Campbell Department of Sociology, Chandler Gilbert Community College R. Runk 5/8/21

2 How Censorship Forms a Negative Social Bias Censorship refers to the suppression of public communication, speech, or other information. It is done for various reasons —if the content is considered inappropriate, harmful, objectionable, or sensitive. Censorship is carried out by private institutions and governing bodies. It targets the commonly used communication methods and media such as social media, the internet, books, films, music, the press, television, radio, and arts. The rationale behind censorship is to control and prohibit harmful material and information from threatening national security and societal morals. However, in some cases, governments and private institutions overstep their mandate of controlling and prohibition. Censorship campaigns infringe and undermine fundamental human rights such as the freedom of expression, religion, and speech. As a result, censorship gains a negative connotation of promoting negative social biases such as discrimination, implicit bias, and moral subjectivity. The laws governing censorship vary from one country to another, which leaves a gray area that governments and private institutions exploit to create negative social biases. In most cases, the laws are not absolute; they require a balance between people’s conflicting interests and rights to decide what can, and cannot, be censored. Censorship techniques by governments and private institutions do not define what constitutes hate speech, inappropriate or harmful behavior, which ends up promoting covert discrimination (Ben-David & Fernandez, 2016). This allows for

3 double standards, where governments and private institutions can launch discriminative campaigns targeting groups deemed a significant threat to national security and social unity. Censorship promotes discrimination because it is sometimes used as a tool to ban or limit free expression of groups of people, especially the minorities. Essentially, concepts such as ‘cancel culture’ censorship highlights the discriminative strategies by governments and private institutions to suppress individuals championing progressive change and social equality (Nossel, 2020). The discriminatory behavior by authorities and governing institutions targets people with opposing views even though they advocate for social justice. The negative biases support false beliefs and opinions against such people in censorship programs. Media censorship promotes the spread of false beliefs and biases towards people and groups considered to have different political views or opinions; this limits liberty and undermines democracy. Most governing bodies and governments enforce false beliefs by painting a bad picture of their critics and individuals they deem dangerous to the common good. Thus, censorship campaigns are crucial to control and prohibit content and information from critics and opposition. Such methods show why media censorship is a defining feature of authoritarian regimes (Chen & Yang, 2018). For example, the censorship in social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook campaigns directed towards Trump and his supporters amounted to anti-conservative bias and a political witch hunt (Novacic, 2020). This highlighted implicit bias, which is a big issue that affects content moderation choices and decisions by most social media sites. The biases applied are used to control people’s behavior and attitudes by limiting access to ‘enlightening’ materials and contents. Censorship forms part of the political biases and ‘witch

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4 hunt’ campaigns that suppress information and communication from critics who are misleading the societies, which raises the issue of moral subjectivity. The theory of moral subjectivity states that morals are not standard and are subjective in nature. No clear guidelines are set as to whether morals are correct or not. Moral subjectivity related to censorship shows that social media sites and governments are prone to create social environments that support their beliefs and values. This can make people with opposing views and opinions appear morally wrong. Negative biases in seeking information are common in moral and political issues, which elicit strong emotions and reactions. Censorship laws vary, and are not absolute, which means that governments and private institutions can launch biased and discriminative campaigns to suppress their opponents. People in authority use censorship to create congruent environments by prohibiting views and opinions from critics and ensuring the public is exposed to content and materials that align with their ideas and beliefs. This highlights the avoidance and selective information-seeking concepts used in censorship to lock out any opposing political views and opinions (Ashokkumar et al., 2020). Selective censorship of incongruent content and material promotes negative social bias, where people leave out information that does not support their opinions even if the information is factual. In conclusion, censorship promotes negative social biases by delimiting information and promoting suppression of perceived threats to people’s common good. It encourages discriminatory behaviors, implicit bias, and moral subjectivity in societies. People’s views and beliefs vary, which means authorities and institutions can use censorship to suppress freedom of expression and speech in an effort to silence critics and dissenters. This highlights moral subjectivity and double standards of the respective governments and private institutions in

5 creating their congruent environments. Censorship undermines the social fabric of communities by influencing facts and promoting negative social biases. Most importantly, it compromises reason and prevents people from co-existing peacefully irrespective of their differences in views and opinions. References Ashokkumar, A., Talaifar, S., Fraser, W. T., Landabur, R., Buhrmester, M., Gómez, Á. & Swann Jr, W. B. (2020). Censoring political opposition online: Who does it and why. Journal of experimental social psychology , 91 , 104031. Ben-David, A., & Fernández, A. M. (2016). Hate speech and covert discrimination on social media: Monitoring the Facebook pages of extreme-right political parties in Spain. International Journal of Communication , 10 , 27. Chen, Y., & Yang, D. Y. (2018). The impact of media censorship: Evidence from a field experiment in China. Stanford Graduate School of Business , 4 , 302. Nossel, S. (2020). ‘Cancel culture’ censorship can be most dangerous for those who promote social justice. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/cancel-culture-censorship-can-be- most-dangerous-those-who-promote-ncna1235671 Novacic, I. (2020). Censorship on social media? It’s not what you think. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/censorship-social-media-conservative-liberal-cbsn- originals/ Poetker, B. (2019). How Internet Censorship Affect You (+Pros & Cons). https://www.g2.com/articles/internet-censorship

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