Reframing the censorship debate

Although I stopped watching the islamist channel of Aljazeera a long time ago, I did follow a live forum (Al Minbar) which was aired this afternoon and considered the issue of internet censorship in Tunisia.

The show confirmed an idea which I had been reflecting on for some time now, and that is that the problem of censorship is unevenly perceived by people, even if we keep portraying it simply as a confrontation between supporters of an autocratic tradition and petitioners for freedom and democracy.

Most bloggers, not just Tunisians, see the world in black and white: on the one hand there are bad people who support censorship (and who, therefore, support and sustain authoritarian regimes), and on the other hand there are good people who reject censorship (and thus are dissidents and supporters of free speech). So the issue is persistently framed as ‘them’ the oppressors versus ‘us’ the freedom seekers.

In reality things are a lot messier and less homogeneous than this. There are many internet users in this country and elsewhere who actually support the idea of censorship whilst having very little sympathy for autocratic politics (I’m thinking for example of religious individuals who support a ban on pornographic or left-leaning websites, or leftists who call for greater monitoring of religious websites). There are also many internet users who advocate free speech whilst affirming the legitimacy of authoritarian political systems (for instance they would write petitions asking highly-ranked officials to ‘intervene’ and lift the ban on specific websites). And there are many people who use the internet on the day-to-day basis but do not care about this whole issue of censorship and do not perceive it as a problem (for example, youngsters for whom the internet literally means email and facebook, and nothing else).

I believe there is now a need to put all kinds of emotions and taken-for-granted ideas aside, and open up a productive debate which is sensible to this diversity of situations and opinions about internet censorship. Perhaps instead of acting as a silly audience for a station with a political agenda such as Aljazeera we could launch our own 'minbar' on the blogopshere and use it as an opportunity to achieve a deeper understanding of the mechanisms, stakeholders, and practical implications of internet censorship.