Censorship,the Internet and schools: a new moral panic?

As the use of the Internet in schools increases, so too do anxieties over inappropriate access, often fuelled by a popular media focus upon the dangers of children's exposure to pornographic or extremist material. Teachers and school managers, attempting to weigh such hazards against the education potential of access to global information sources, are caught in the crossfire between those who call for rigid controls and those who argue for freedom and access. In the context of these contrary positions, this article begins by exploring the extent to which current public concern over Internet access can be seen as the “moral panic” of the 1990s. Following this, we draw upon examples from Education Departments' Superhighways Initiative (EDSI) to examine the responses of teachers faced with these dilemmas and the effectiveness of various strategies in resolving them. While a combination of control over access (particularly for younger children) and sanctions for inappropriate use was in operation in most schools, many teachers' preferred strategy was to alert pupils to the potential dangers, and to educate them to become responsible users.     

浅析美国出版言论审查的特点

分析美国出版的言论审查史,总结其出版言论审查的特点:1)其审查多通过立法实施,并由法院定谳,但美国各法院并非立国之初便支持出版言论自由,期间多有反复;2)美国各行政机关极少赤裸裸地干涉出版言论活动,但善于利用民意压制出版言论自由;3)美国战时的出版言论审查明显严于和平时期。     

Culture,Gender and Subjectivities: Computer and Internet Restrictions in a High School Library

ABSTRACT

This paper is drawn from an empirical, ethnographic study of information and communications technologies (ICT) use among thirteen, low-income twelfth-graders attending a large urban high school and focuses on participants' ICT access in the school library. It examines how library staff members' cultural and gendered perceptions shaped ICT restrictions in ways that disproportionately impacted students of color, boys, and boys of color and how institutional factors helped to create conditions under which subjectivities served as guideposts for managing scarce resources. I argue that some restrictions were unfounded, unnecessarily impeded these students' ICT use and access and created avoidable tensions between students and library staff.     

FOR THE PERIOD APRIL-JUNE, 2004

ABSTRACT

The history of Christian censorship up to the sixteenth century reveals scattered attempts to censor works of individual authors, but neither a systematic effort to formulate rules for regulating printers, booksellers, and authors, nor an effort to compile a comprehensive list of prohibited books. The first such attempt was made by the Council of Trent, which formulated a set of rules for printing, selling, and censoring books. These “Tridentine rules” were accompanied by a list of forbidden books, and together they formed the first Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1564). The Index underwent many revisions, the most important being the 1900 edition of Pope Leo XIII, which replaced the Tridentine rules with a set of Decreta Generalia on censoring and prohibiting books. Publication of the Index continued until its abolition in 1966. The reasons for its demise include the triumph of the Reformation and the rise of the nation-state, mass literacy, and mass communications.     

中小学教科书编审流程——以语文教科书为例

中小学教科书强调政策导向性、经典性、规范性和可操作性,其编写和审查有着固定而严格的程序,对参与工作的人员有一些特殊的要求.     

The Rhetorical Dynamics of Gender Harassment On-Line

This article compares two extended interactions that took place recently on the Internet, one from a recreational Internet Relay Chat (IRC)channel, and the other from an academic listserv discussion group. The two interactions exhibit similar gender dynamics, which can be characterized as harassment of female by male participants. This harassment takes different forms, in keeping with the possibilities inherent in the two modes of computer-mediated communication. Whereas female participants on IRC are kicked off the channel, in the discussion group harassers must rely exclusively on language to intimidate and silence. This "rhetoric of harassment" crucially invokes libertarian principles of freedom of expression, constructing women's resistance as "censorship." A rhetorical analysis of the two harassment episodes thus sheds light on the means used to construct and maintain asymmetrical gender and power dynamics in different modes of CMC.     

Caught between empire and occupation: censorship,deimperialization, and Koreans in postwar Japan

ABSTRACT

The collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945 plunged East Asia into a state of flux and upheaval, making necessary the redrawing of geopolitical borders and the redefining the “boundaries” of nationality, language, and legal status. As part of this broader process, Koreans in occupied postwar Japan, via the platform of the magazine Democratic Korea (Minshu Chōsen), advocated for a joint process of decolonization and deimperialization whereby both Koreans and Japanese could construct a society free of imperial hierarchies. U.S. Military Occupation policy and censorship, however, thwarted these efforts and disallowed the possibility for the inclusion of a Korean subjectivity within the space of the Japanese nation. Facing intense political pressure, Koreans in Japan started to shift toward a “non-national” Zainichi Korean subjectivity distinct from the two Korean-nation states established in 1948. Further, through analyzing the case of Koreans in occupied Japan, this article sheds light on the broader impact of occupation censorship on postwar Japanese society and how the post-imperial transition to a nation-state model was a tumultuous one.     

“Heaven,Hell, and Here”: Understanding the Impact of Incarceration through a Prison Newspaper

Prison newspaper stories capture the quotidian atmosphere of the penitentiary as it is lived and understood by people confined there. This article analyzes a newspaper produced since 2001 at a state prison for women in the northeastern United States. The publication comes out of a journalism class taught by the author and a colleague, and is produced entirely by inmates of the prison. After situating the prison newspaper as a tool of ideological struggle, the article uses symbolic convergence theory to provide a fantasy theme analysis of the texts and to illuminate the rhetorical vision they create for their authors and audiences. The newspaper expresses inmates' struggles to overcome the degradations of confinement with spirituality, compassion, pragmatism, and even humor.     

是畅销书,又是禁书——从《哈利·波特》看美国的图书馆权利

从图书馆权利中图书馆选择和收藏资料的自由、读者阅读和接受信息的自由出发,对《哈利·波特》系列图书在学校图书馆限制借阅的案例进行了评析,重点呈现了案件所体现出的将图书馆权利上升到宪法高度加以保护、通过司法判例确立具有法律效力的可操作性原则、对相关判例的直接援引以及法院之友等美国司法制度的显著特征,并对案例的社会影响作了简要概括。     

Manufacturing the (In)visible: Power to Communicate,Power to Silence

The paper develops the argument of two faces of censorship as a form of symbolic violence over individuals directed either inward or outward. In both instances, the resistance to disclosure and an effort to keep things hidden are normally complemented by strategic control over the process of making things visible. Silence is usually considered a sign of censorship, but in reality it can indicate not only the suppression of, but also a resistance to, communication. Despite the changes leading toward the “structural censorship” in modern complex societies, the essential questions remain: What are the strategies to confront the (hidden) forces of censorship, and how successful can they be?