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Just remember, when an authoritarian government expresses interest in your opinions, its not necessarily with your best interests at heart.

Thats what the Chinese government has been doing over the last few years, according to a study by researchers in Hong Kong, Sweden, and the United States.

The study found that the regime has been selectively loosening its grip on social media censorship and allowing users to discuss some sensitive topics but its doing this in part to better track dissent and nip potential protest movements in the bud.

For the study, titled Why Does China Allow Freer Social Media? Protests versus Surveillance and Propaganda and published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, researchers analyzed more than 13 billion posts made to Sina Weibo, a Chinese-language microblogging platform akin to Twitter, and correlated these with 545 collective protest events.

They discovered that online censors often allowed free discussion of controversial topics including official corruption and pollution, in many cases accompanied by calls for protests and strikes, apparently with an eye to preventing or limiting the latter.

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Overall, around three million posts relating to protests or social conflict and another 1.3 million relating to strikes were allowed to remain by censors.

Towards that end, the authors state we find that social media can be very effective for protest surveillance, as Most of the real-world protests and strikes that we study can be predicted one day in advance based on social media content.

In one case, the city government of Chengdu simply canceled the weekend, requiring workers to show up at their workplaces and students to be in school, in order to head off a protest over a planned toxic chemical factory.

In fact, users seem to assume that their social media is being monitored, and use it as a channel to circumvent local officials and communicate directly with the central government.

In one interesting example, the user wrote: Billions of money went into the pockets of local officials and their business partners! President Xi, Premier Li, and Secretary Wang in the Central Discipline Inspection Department, do you read our microblogs? Can you hear our voice? Please eradicate these corrupt officials! Right now!

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China Loosens Social Media Censorship To Uncover Dissent - MediaPost Communications

The company we keep Elvis Presley, Big Bird, South Park, Lena Dunham have all been censored. Composite: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty; Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Alamy; Chris Buck for the Guardian

If Lena Dunham had her way, one episode of Girls would have featured a shot of freshly-ejaculated sperm looping through the air. This was brought up during a recent oral history of the show ahead of its last ever series as well as the fact that HBO stepped in and stopped it from happening on the grounds of basic taste.

With its money shot that never was, Girls has now entered the hallowed halls of censored TV shows. Heres a potted history of the company it keeps.

When Elvis Presley waggled his pelvis on the Milton Berle Show in 1956, an appalled New York Daily News described the performance as being tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos. So, when Elvis appeared on the Steve Allen Show some months later, nervous executives forced him to tone down his sexually suggestive dance moves by making him perform Hound Dog to a dog in a hat on a plinth.

One evening, Tonight Show host Jack Paar told a long and rambling anecdote that contained several references to the term WC as a euphemism for toilet. NBC censors, outraged at the filth inherent in discussing water closets on television, cut the anecdote without informing Paar. The following night Paar close to tears walked off set mid-episode and refused to return for a month.

An episode entitled The Fix saw Hutch get addicted to heroin, and the BBC refused to broadcast it. The episode would eventually air during a special Channel 4 Starsky and Hutch night 24 years later. Note: this video is a fan-made montage, although the original would have arguably been more traumatic had it also been soundtracked by How to Save a Life by The Fray.

A first-series episode entitled The Klansmen has never been broadcast in the UK. This could be because it deals with a violent white power organisation and is therefore full of racial epithets. Or it could be because Bodie one of the good guys, remember repeatedly outs himself as a racist in fairly graphic terms. Or it could be down to its big reveal: the leader of the racist organisation was black. Either way, ick.

No footage from the episode Snuffys Parents Get a Divorce exists, because it has never been aired in any form. The story was meant to deal with the breakup of Mr Snuffleupagus family, but test screenings revealed the litany of unintentionally negative effects the episode had on children. Reports suggested that the kids who watched it were in tears, adding They thought nobody loved Snuffy. They worried their own parents were going to get divorced. As a result, the episode was canned forever.

Although it may appear placid to the point of tedium, an episode of the plodding American sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond entitled Maries Sculpture has never been broadcast on British television. Why? Perhaps because this is the episode where Raymonds mother unwittingly creates a giant (and fairly graphic) statue of a female sexual organ. And, since Everybody Loves Raymond only airs at 8am in the UK, its likely the channel decided that a colossal ceramic vagina shouldnt be the last thing kids see before they leave for school of a morning.

When Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in 2005, the outrage was such that South Park was bound to weigh in at some point. The episode Cartoon Wars Part II was initially supposed to show another depiction of Muhammad, but ended up running a black title card reading Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network in its place.

Between 2001 and 2006, Fear Factor was a modestly diverting dare show, like Im a Celebritys Bushtucker Trials stretched out over an hour. However, when NBC revived it in 2011, Fear Factor became a programme where girls in skimpy outfits drank donkey semen while men watched and vomited. After viewing the episode in question, NBC chose not to air it in America. Still, its good to know where the line of decency is. That line is donkey sperm.

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South Park to Sesame Street: the TV censorship hall of fame - The Guardian

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BRAZIL'S PRESIDENT IMPOSES CENSORSHIP OVER CASE INVOLVING FIRST LADY plus55 (blog) Brazil's First Lady Marcela Temer has been a victim of extortion. A hacker entered into her phone and e-mail accounts, threatening to pull President Temer's name through the mud. The First Family reacted quickly. The State Court in Braslia, at the ... Brazil's Two Largest Newspapers Forced by President and Judge to Delete Reporting; We're Publishing It HereThe Intercept Brazilian judge censors O Globo and Folha for publishing first lady's conversations with blackmailer; entities protestKnight Center for Journalism in the Americas (blog) Judge Censors Folha Article about an Extortion Case Related to the First Lady, Marcela TemerFolha de S.Paulo teleSUR English all 8 news articles »

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BRAZIL'S PRESIDENT IMPOSES CENSORSHIP OVER CASE INVOLVING FIRST LADY - plus55 (blog)

Inflame (Kaygi), a first feature by Ceylan Ozgun Ozcelik, is a psychological thriller centered on a woman who suffers recurring nightmares of working on a TV news channel. She lives alone in an apartment left to her by her parents, who died in a car crash 20 years earlier. But the nightmares are actually memories, and her parents could still be alive. Inflame is the only Turkish film playing this year at the Berlin Film Festival, where it world premiered Sunday (Feb. 12) in the Panorama section.

Ozelik, a former movie critic on television,spoke to Variety about how the film, written with guidance from the Sundance Film Institutes Screenwriters Lab in Istanbul, reflects her countrys recent history and current climate. Here are excerpts from the interview.

Inflame germinated at a time when the situation in Turkey was less turbulent. Can you talk to me about the choice of title?

The Turkish title is Kaygi, which is actually a different word. Kaygi in Turkish means worry or anxiety. Its a very popular word in Turkey now. The Sundance lab in Turkey helped me come up with the English-language title.

How do you feel about the idea that due to the title people are going to associate it with the post-coup climate?

The film actually turns on something that happened in the 90s. The protagonist is searching for some kind of sense of her parents death. She has been brought up thinking they died in a car accident. Its about memory and forgetting, but also about the oblivion generated by a collaboration between the government and mass media. When I started writing this film I started asking myself, How much can one forget? Is there a limit to this oblivion? It was unavoidable that the main character was a journalist working in the mainstream media, as I did.

How is your experience working in Turkish TV reflected in the film?

Though I never worked as a news journalist, I observed my friends and co-workers in situations that I could not actually put in the script because the audience would think that its overwritten, exaggerated. For almost two years, I worked for this production company that worked directly for government TV. They would get names of certain people that had to be excluded from the news, especially from social media.

Yet this film is partly funded by the government.

Yes, the Ministry of Culture has seen a longer version of the film, in order for it to get financing.

Can you tell me how the Sundance lab helped you with the script?

I was accepted into the lab with just a 60-page draft. I had two tutors, Naomi Foner and Howard Rodman, who were very helpful. They explained to me what was missing in terms of the connections between the films themes. I was also told that Inflame was reminiscent of Polanskis The Tenant, which made me very happy because I was drawing inspiration from that film. They encouraged me, and this was very meaningful to me.

How deliberate was the choice of venturing into thriller territory?

I just love thrillers; I am crazy about them. The apartment is a very strong symbolic element that you have in many thrillers, especially those that deal with traumatic events from the past. In this case, history seeps into the apartment, and the most powerful support [to this narrative device] comes from the sound.

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Director Ceylon zgn zelik On 'Inflame' and Censorship in ... - Variety

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Are we to be ruled by anarchists and have mob rule?

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Sheldon Rabinowitz, Des Moines, Letter to the Editor 6:21 p.m. CT Feb. 10, 2017

Students from City and West High lead protesters down the pedestrian mall during a rally against President Trump's travel ban on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017.(Photo: David Scrivner/Iowa City Press-Citizen)

If we really have free speech in this country, as provided by law, then any lawful program should be able to be held on any campus. Whether any of us, including university administration or the news media, agree with the sponsors or their subject matter, should have nothing to do with the right to hold the program.

Lawful protest is to be respected, but universities and the local government have the responsibility to protect the people and the property from rioters. Are we to be ruled by anarchists and have mob rule? If the police need to get tough to enforce the law, so be it.

If universities knuckle under threats of rioters, it will only encourage more censorship of what the mob does not want to hear, all across the country.

Sheldon Rabinowitz, Des Moines

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Mob censorship can't be tolerated - DesMoinesRegister.com