Published in English

Freedom of expression depends not only on the mere absence of restrictions, but also on infrastructures of free expression, which are open and accessible. Taking that idea as its starting point, this book traces the metamorphosis of the methods and modes used by states—and private corporations—to shape and to control speech, hastened, as it has been, by the emergence of digital publics.

In a series of ten case studies covering eight countries—China, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India, Egypt, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Brazil, and the United States of America—and two essays that provide an overall theoretical framework for these changes, this book reveals some of the changes we are seeing in the nature of censorship itself, and also reveals how things have not changed.

This book—the fourth in the Access to Knowledge (A2K) series published by the Access to Knowledge Global Academy (A2KGA)—has its origins both in the A2KGA network and a meeting—the Global Censorship Conference organized at Yale University in 2012. The A2KGA is an informal network of academic and research centres—based in Brazil, China, Egypt, India, South Africa, and the United States of America—committed to research, education, and policy advice promoting access to knowledge, and has previously published books on Access to Knowledge in India, in Brazil, and in Egypt.