Censorship In Social Media: Political Satire and the Internet’s “Oppositionists”

Abstract

Censorship has been prevalent through time in various forms, at different historical periods all over the world. It is negatively perceived, and it is considered to undermine democracy and violate human rights. As a rule, it is a feature that characterises conservative societies, totalitarian regimes, as well as individuals with ideological preconceptions. The areas mostly affected by it include freedom of expression and free movement of ideas. Governments try to ward themselves against this phenomenon in various manners, in particular by establishing laws that protect human goods and moral values, as those have been shaped from the Age of Enlightenment onwards. However, in recent years, in the midst of the rapid dissemination of technology and the swift development of social media, a tendency has emerged consisting in trying to influence the unsuspecting public opinion and resulting in excluding from the public sphere opinions which are not pleasant to part of the media users, often serving “external” interests. Therefore, the online medium, free par excellence and offering, in principle, the possibility to everyone to publicly and courageously express their opinions, hinders and becomes an obstacle to the dissemination of “another” opinion, in spite of this dissemination being the ultimate intellectual feature of contemporary societies. This type of censorship has now been included in the long list of the many aspects of the phenomenon seen to this day.