For more than thirty years, historians of the Holy Roman Empire have registered little discernible interest in imperial censorship during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As historical scholarship has evolved in its understanding of the Holy Roman Empire during this period, it has lagged behind in its appreciation for how imperial authorities controlled expression and regulated the book trade. Old assumptions about imperial censorship have been slow to wither and decay even though assumptions about the Empire have been reexamined and revised. Where a growing appreciation for the Empire's complexities spurred interest in territorial and civic censorship, a corresponding interest in imperial censorship has not developed. Interestingly, the two–old assumptions and modern revisionist histories–have conspired to moot studies of the imperial government, its policies, and its procedures, which has meant that the significance of imperial censorship in the Empire has been largely overlooked. Moreover, historians' attention to local controls and regulations has inspired a more nuanced approach to censorship than had previously prevailed, leading to a general reassessment of how censorship influenced the circulation and reception of ideas in both positive and negative ways. Imperial censorship has failed to register its mark in this regard as well. Using a combination of imperial censorship legislation, archival documents, and printed primary sources, this dissertation charts imperial censorship during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as both a concept and a practice. Unable to enforce religious uniformity in the Empire after the Reformation's successful establishment in the 1520s, imperial legislation came to rely on libel, rather than heresy, as the formal basis for its censorship policies. Libel was an ambiguous category of illicit expression, the interpretation of which depended a great deal on the contingencies of context and the subjective preferences of enforcers. This affected how imperial and local authorities, respectively, interacted on matters of censorship, requiring more negotiation and cooperation than has heretofore been appreciated.

No description available.

Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate how the journalist profession is challenged when the media in Kosovo is intruded by political and business interests and what happens to television journalists and editors; professionals who fight for their right to produce news. The intention with the study is to describe, discuss and analyze the results found in this study around the obstacles faced within the journalist profession in Kosovo caused by the intrusion of political and business interests in journalistic work. One has to also consider that Kosovo is a new state, having weak mechanisms for protecting the rights of journalists and editors. Research method: In this study, the qualitative interview has been used as research method to collect empirical data and to get an idea of the personal experiences of Kosovo journalists. Limitations: This study does not present an investigation into the Kosovo media landscape as a whole and does not give other parties involved in journalistic work (for example media owners, politicians and advertisers) the opportunity to express their views. Further, the voices of rural journalists and editors are not included. Finally, interviewees mainly work as television journalists and editors, reflecting the fact that media consumption in Kosovo is almost exclusively by viewing television. Results: Results suggest that Kosovo journalists and editors are held back in their profession due to political and economical influence on their work. This is carried out in the form of threats and blackmailing in which an external political or economical force personally threats the journalist or editor or threats to pull back financial support unless positive media coverage in a specific media is delivered. Journalists and editors are thus not able to carry out their role as watchdogs and are put in a position in which they feel unsafe and disrespected. Suggestions for future research: For future research, it would be interesting to look into “the other side” of the media, i.e. advertisers, political elite and media companies in Kosovo. A more comprehensive study could maybe shed a broader light on the Kosovo media problems and possibly find some solutions for the future of the existing problems. It can also be interesting to look at international interference in the journalist profession in Kosovo.

This thesis explores aspects of map censorship in Google China through a theoretical framework based on Foucault’s power/knowledge. Comparing results of content analysis of maps in Google Ditu in Google China and Google Maps in Google Dot Com, the thesis analyzes the degree of censorship of maps in the Google geoweb. My findings are a higher density of labeling in Google Ditu in comparison with Google Maps, the absence of VGI in Google Ditu, the limitation of zoom level at Google Ditu, and the absence of Street View in China. This thesis suggests possible explanations to differences in map information between Google Ditu and Google Maps.

This thesis focuses on the work of policing, regulating and monitoring of New Zealand public censorship classifications. It follows the processes and agents involved in the day-to-day practices of the enforcement of the classifications given to objects by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. Responsibility for the enforcement of the classification decisions of the Office is delegated to private agents and agencies involved in supplying audiences with classified media products - cinemas, video stores, bookstores and libraries. The thesis also documents enforcement undertaken directly by public agents of the Censorship Compliance Unit. In this case enforcement is concerned with unclassified publications circulating on the Internet. The thesis argues that the networks of agents assembled for the practices of enforcement evolve as the forms of media evolve or change. The thesis focuses on the modes of interaction between agents, media and publics enacted in the different sites of the cinema, the bookstore, the video store, the library and the Internet. It documents the work of enforcement involved in the purchase of images for a fixed period of time in the fixed site of the cinema; the purchase of books from the fixed site of the bookstore; the hire of video films and video games from the fixed site of the video store; and the borrowing of books and videos from the fixed site of the public library. It contrasts the work of enforcement in these different sites with the development of new work practices involved in the interactive, fluid and seemingly intangible yet still policed site of the Internet. It documents how the responsibilities for, and the practices of, enforcement shift between public sites of enforcement to the increasingly difficult public monitoring of the private consumption of images distributed through the media of the Internet. It pays attention to how different methods and strategies of enforcement have been developed in response to both the classification and consumption of the expanding variety of mobile media and the proliferation and consumption of images in the unclassified and fluid world of the Internet.

This study examined the pattern of online public opinion change in China by investigating the top one hit blog and its following commentaries of every day from July 2009 to March 2012 on a famous Chinese website, and then discussed potential factors that affected the formation of online public opinion. The extent of freedom of online public opinion during this period presented regular fluctuations. Whether criticisms were registered by commentators was influenced by four factors. First and most important, the negative tone of bloggers increased criticism and the positive tone decreased criticism, which shows that the news that flows from the media to the public is amplified and interpreted by influential bloggers according to the two-step flow theory. Second, while national and local events had no effect, international news events decreased criticism because the public strongly supported the Chinese government. This was as important as the first factor. Third, the negative tone of events discussed in blogs increased criticism, which means that the mass media did have some direct influence through negative but not positive events. And fourth, when the government censored blogs and commentaries, the public shied away from criticism because their posts would probably be removed.

In what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze labelled Control Societies, mechanisms reminiscent of censorship – that is, restriction of information that administrators of power wish to regulate the spreading of – are present in the concept of copyright. This kind of censorship has the advantage of not being scrutinized by public eyes in the way that the work of institutionalized censorship agencies such as the Swedish Statens Biografbyrå was. It is not unlikely that expanded possibilities for punishing anyone who spreads copyrighted material will result in larger and larger areas that may not be accessed, as the avoiding of conflict and repressive actions will emphasize the behaviour to take detours around information that is deemed taboo and therefore suspicious and dangerous. The ACTA trade agreement is one proposed tool for such extended possibilities for punishment. This essay does not however claim that copyright and censorship are the same – but rather that the institutional execution of power that was previously a matter of state censorship has a lot of similarities with current and prognosticated application of copyright laws by corporations. While claiming to protect the individual, the disciplinary power executed actually aims to protect the one executing it; the purpose of the power structure is to replicate itself.

This study assesses the value of two analytical models explaining particular contemporary political events. This is undertaken through the comparative evaluation of two international models: the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Rhodes’s model of Governance. These approaches are evaluated against an single case study: the censorship of computer network (“online”) content in Australia. Through comparison evaluation, criticism, and reformulation, these approaches are presented as useful tools of policy analysis in Australia. / The first part of the thesis presents the theoretical basis of the research and the methodologies employed to apply them. It begins by examining how the disciplines of political science and public policy have focused on the role of politically-active “interest”, groups in the process of policy development and implementation. This focus has lead to ideas about the role of the state actors in policy making, and attempts to describe and explain the interface between public and private groups in developing and implementing public policies. These, largely British and American, theories have impacted upon Australian researchers who have applied these ideas to local conditions. The majority of this part, however, is spent introducing the two research approaches: Paul Sabatier’s Advocacy Coalitions Framework and Rod Rhodes’s theory of Governance. Stemming from dissatisfaction with research into implementation, Sabatier’s framework attempts to show how competing clusters of groups and individuals compete for policy “wins” in a discrete subsystem by using political strategies to effect favourable decisions and information to change the views of other groups. Governance, on the other hand, attempts to apply Rhodes’s observations to the changing nature of the British state (and by implication other liberal democracies) to show the importance of self-organising networks of organisations who monopolise power and insulate the processes of decision making and implementation from the wider community and state organs. Finally, the methodologies of the thesis are presented, based on the preferred research methods of the two authors. / The second part introduces the case serving as the basis for evaluating the models, namely, censorship of the content of computer networks in Australia between 1987 and 2000. This case arises in the late 1980s with the computerisation of society and technological developments leading to the introduction of, first publicly-accessible computer bulletin boards, and then the technology of the Internet. From a small hobbyists’ concern, the uptake of this technology combined with wider censorship issues leads to the consideration of online content by Australian Governments, seeking a system of regulation to apply to this technology. As the emerging Internet becomes popularised, and in the face of adverse media attention on, especially pornographic, online content, during the mid to late 1990s two Federal governments establish a series of policy processes that eventually lead to the introduction of the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999, a policy decision bringing online content into Australia’s intergovernmental censorship system. / The final part analyses the case study using the two theoretical approaches. What this shows is that, from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework, debate over online content does not form a substantive policy subsystem until 1995, and within this three, relatively stable, competing coalitions emerge, each pressuring for different levels of action and intervention (from no regulation, to a strong regulatory model). While conflict within the subsystem varied, overall the framework’s analysis shows the dominance of a coalition consisting largely of professional and business interests favouring a light, co-regulatory approach to online content. From the perspective of Governance, the issue of online content is subject to a range of intra- and inter-governmental conflict in the period 1995-7, finally settling into a negotiated position where a complex policy community emerges based largely on structurally-determined resource dependencies. What this means is that policy making in the case was not autonomous of state institutions, but highly dependent on institutional power relations. Overall, in comparing the findings it becomes apparent that the approaches lack the capacity to fully explain the role of key sovereigns, defined here as those individuals with legal authority over decision making in the policy process, because of their methodological and normative assumptions about the policy process. By showing these individuals as part of wider networks of power-dependencies, and exploring the complex bundle of real, pseudo, symbolic, and nonsense elements that make up a policy, the role of Ministers as “semi-sovereign sovereigns” can be accommodated in the two approaches.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2007. / Title from screen (viewed on March 6, 2008). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Ken Davis, Jonathan R. Eller, William F. Touponce. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 214-228).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2004. / Adviser: Barbara W. Grossman. Submitted to the Dept. of Drama. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-257). Also available via the World Wide Web; Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community.