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As media consumption habits evolve and entertainment choices proliferate, content creators and distributors have a significant opportunity to expand their relationships with customers.
New digital technologies and rising consumer expectations continue to upend business models, and many media companies find themselves struggling to adjust to the ongoing disruption. Unlike the captive audiences of the past, today's consumers can choose not only what type of content they want, but also how and when to enjoy it. These viewers increasingly use streaming TV services, binge-watch, and skip ads, and such behaviors are driving significant changes in business models. For content creators and distributors, this era of consumer choice and market fragmentation presents challenges but also significant opportunities.

What can media companies expect in the coming years? While many questions remain, a few high-level trends are emerging that can guide industry players as they seek clarity. These include the following opportunities.

Simplify choices for customers. In Deloitte's latest Digital Democracy Survey, nearly half of U.S. consumers polled said they now subscribe to a streaming video service; a majority said they value their streaming service subscriptions for watching commercial-free content whenever and wherever they choose, and on whichever device they prefer. However, many consumers are perplexed about their options for entertainment in the home or on the go. They might hear tremendous buzz about a new show, for example, but not know which network or over-the-top (OTT) streaming platform carries it. At the same time, consumers are trying to determine which traditional and OTT services to subscribe to-the magic mix of offerings that will bring them a desirable lineup of content at the best value. Many consumers see the appeal of the "skinny" bundles OTT providers are launching-packaged offerings that stream a limited number of popular channels such as the major networks and leading cable channels. On the other hand, many viewers remain anchored to traditional pay TV.

Overall, the market has become highly fragmented, with many different platforms, pricing structures, and delivery models. Consumers ultimately still have many questions about what providers or services to choose and how to put together the best deals for themselves. What can businesses expect? One possibility is the emergence of new players that bring together many sources of content while simplifying viewing choices. In addition to spurring potential consolidation, today's highly fragmented market also could inspire direct-to-consumer breakouts or even embolden new players that could go head-to-head with entrenched powerhouses.

Leverage growing volumes of data for deep insights. ​There is a vast amount of data about consumer viewing behaviors, interests, attitudes, and demographics. This trove of structured and unstructured data is growing exponentially as consumers access fresh content, click on ads, use new device types and platforms, and engage with brands via social media. Modern analytics applications that enable companies to draw insights from such data can change the game drastically, enabling companies to segment audiences narrowly and then deliver precisely targeted content and advertisements to those groups.

When do viewers tend to watch a particular show? When do they switch devices-from a big screen to a small screen, for example? What interests do their choices indicate? What actions are they taking on social media as part of a broader experience around content? Each action at each touchpoint represents data that holds value. The challenge lies in interpreting that data and making it actionable.​

Own the entire customer experience. Big industry mergers in the works will likely tighten the bonds between the creators of content and the owners of delivery networks. Net neutrality issues aside, an organization that can operate at the intersection of content creation, content delivery, and the consumer experience stands to reap great rewards. Such an organization could have unprecedented "ownership" of the customer. It could garner deep, detailed insights into customers. It could advertise to them in a hypertargeted manner. It could drive viewers to its own content or to partners' content-and sell ads or additional services around that content. It could control the overall consumer experience and track the relationship every step of the way, knowing who uses which device to access which content.

The consumer is still king and exercises immense choice. However, companies that can dominate in the sphere of creation, delivery, and experience could determine those choices and help influence the consumer's decisions.

Take advantage of short formats. As consumers continue to show a preference for binge-watching content, and as more creators step up to meet the demand, the definition of bingeable content could change. Today's hyperconnected consumer can view content in many places beyond the home-on public transit, while waiting to pick up the kids after school, or in a physician's waiting room. Yet traditional-length bingeable content doesn't necessarily align well with such windows of time.

For content creators, there's a legitimate opportunity to capitalize on the binge-watching trend with short-form content-12-minutes episodes, for example-that a viewer can consume throughout his or her day. Advertisers, meanwhile, could sponsor such content with shorter ads. Viewers already are watching six-second video ads before hitting the "skip this ad" button. Why not get a full advertising message out in six seconds and link it to a short-form, bingeable piece of original content as a few platforms are doing today?

*****

As entertainment choices continue to evolve, media organizations may face big decisions about which market opportunities are worth pursuing, which revenue models could drive profitability, which technologies will be most effective, and which partnerships will be most advantageous. By exploring such questions, companies can begin to develop their visions for what's possible. However, staking out a leadership position will require more than just a vision. It also will require an ability to develop insights-driven strategies and to execute them effectively.
-Kevin Westcott, vice chairman, U.S. media & entertainment leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP

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Media Industry Opportunities in an Era of Customer Choice

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The disruption and fragmentation of the media industry continues, giving consumers a rapidly growing number of options for home entertainment. While media companies face many questions about market opportunities, revenue models, and enabling technologies, they also have opportunities.

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Although you may not realize it, media censorship takes place in many forms in the way you get your news. While news stories are often edited for length, there are many subjective choices that are made which are designed to keep some information from becoming public. Sometimes these decisions are made to safeguard a person's privacy, others to protect media outlets from corporate or political fallout, and yet others for concerns of national security.

This is probably the least controversial form of media censorship. For instance, when a minor (someone under age 18) commits a crime, his or her identity is concealed to protect them from future harm -- so he or she isn't turned down from getting a college education or a job. That changes if a minor is charged as an adult, like in the case of violent crime.

Most media outlets also conceal the identity of rape victims, so those people don't have to endure public humiliation. That was not the case for a brief period at NBC News when it decided in 1991 to identify the woman accusing William Kennedy Smith (part of the powerful Kennedy clan) of raping her. NBC later reverted to the common practice of secrecy.

Journalists also protect their anonymous sources from having their identity exposed for fear of retaliation. This is especially important when informants are highly placed individuals in governments or corporations that have direct access to important information.

Every day, someone commits a heinous act of violence or sexual depravity. In newsrooms across the country, editors have to decide whether saying a victim "was assaulted" suffices in describing what happened.

In most instances, it does not. So a choice has to be made on how to describe the details of a crime in a way that helps the audience understand its atrocity without offending readers or viewers, especially children.

It's a fine line. In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, the way he killed more than a dozen people were considered so sick that the graphic details were part of the story.

That was also true when news editors were faced with the sexual details of Pres. Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the accusations of sexual harassment Anita Hill made about then-U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee Clarence Thomas. Words that no editor had ever thought of printing or a newscaster had ever considered uttering were necessary to explain the story.

Those are the exceptions. In most cases, editors will cross out information of an extremely violent or sexual nature, not to sanitize the news, but to keep it from offending the audience.

The U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic operations function with a certain amount of secrecy. That confidentiality is regularly challenged by whistle-blowers, anti-government groups or others who want to remove the lid on various aspects of U.S. government.

In 1971, The New York Times published what's commonly called the Pentagon Papers, secret Defense Department documents detailing the problems of American involvement in the Vietnam War in ways the media had never reported. The Nixon administration went to court in a failed attempt to keep the leaked documents from being published.

Decades later, WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange are under fire for posting more than a quarter million secret U.S. documents, many involving national security. When The New York Times published these U.S. State Department papers, the U.S. Air Force responded by blocking the newspaper's website from its computers.

These examples show that media owners face a difficult relationship with the government. When they approve stories containing potentially embarrassing information, government officials often try to censor it.

Media companies are supposed to serve the public interest. Sometimes that's at odds with the conglomerate owners who control traditional media voices.

Such was the case when The New York Times reported that executives from MSNBC owner General Electric and Fox News Channel owner News Corporation decided it wasn't in their corporate interests to allow on-air hosts Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly to trade on-air attacks. While the jabs seemed mostly personal, there was news that came out of them.

The Times reported that O'Reilly uncovered that General Electric was doing business in Iran. Although legal, G.E. later said it had stopped. A cease-fire between the hosts probably wouldn't have produced that information, which is newsworthy despite the apparent motivation for getting it.

Cable TV giant Comcast faces a unique charge of censorship. Shortly after the Federal Communications Commission approved its takeover of NBC Universal, it hired FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker who had voted for the merger.

While some denounced the move as a conflict of interest, a single tweet is what unleashed Comcast's wrath. A worker at a summer film camp for teenage girls questioned the hiring through Twitter. Comcast responded by yanking $18,000 in funding for the camp.

The company later apologized and offered to restore its contribution. Camp officials say they want to be able to speak freely without being hushed by corporations.

Critics often lambast media for having a political bias. While viewpoints on the editorial pages are clear to see, the link between politics and censorship is harder to spot.

The ABC news program Nightline once devoted its broadcast to reading the names of more than 700 U.S. servicemen and women killed in Iraq. What appeared to be a solemn tribute to military sacrifice was interpreted as a politically-motivated, anti-war stunt by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which didn't allow the program to be seen on the seven ABC stations it owned.

Sinclair is the same company that a media watchdog group says called more than 100 members of Congress "censorship advocates" for raising concerns to the FCC about Sinclair's plans to air the film, Stolen Honor. That production was blasted for being propaganda against then-presidential candidate John Kerry.

Sinclair responded by saying it wanted to air the documentary after the major networks refused to show it. In the end, bowing to pressure on several fronts, the company aired a revised version that only included parts of the film.​

Communist countries that once stopped the free flow of information may have largely disappeared, but even in America, censorship issues keep some news from reaching you. With the explosion of citizen journalism and internet platforms, the truth will now have an easier way of getting out.

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How Media Censorship Affects the News You See

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Although you may not realize it, media censorship takes place in many forms in the way you get your news. While news stories are often edited for length, there are many subjective choices that are made which are designed to keep some information from becoming public.

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The BBC would for the first time face fines for breaches of taste and decency under a beefed-up regulatory regime in the Government's forthcoming Communications Bill.

The move had been resisted by the BBC as a potential waste of licence payers' money, but will place the broadcaster on a par with commercial rivals found to have broken regulations. The recommendation was one of more than 120 accepted by the Government yesterday of 148 made by Lord Puttnam and a cross-party committee appointed to scrutinise the draft legislation.

Tougher powers will be given to Ofcom, the proposed communications regulator, which may go some way to pacifying those who feared it did not have the authority to police the burgeoning communications market. Ministers have stuck to their guns on the two most controversial measures in the Bill: opening British broadcasting to possible foreign ownership; and permitting newspaper publishers to buy Channel 5, a move that could allow Rupert Murdoch to take a stake in British terrestrial television.

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Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Attention focused yesterday on the BBC. A BBC spokesman said the governors operated under clear legal obligations that made it the most closely regulated broadcaster. He said the BBC believed fines were not constructive but understood that the decision was based on a need to demonstrate a clear level playing field. "We look forward to discussing how the fining regime will work."

Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrats' media spokesman, backed the decision but said: "Taking licence payers' money from the BBC and putting it into Treasury coffers would not be acceptable at all. Investing cash from BBC fines in community television initiatives or media training could be the solution."

John Whittingdale, for the Conservatives, said he failed to see why the BBC was not brought completely under the authority of Ofcom instead of leaving some issues to the BBC governors.

Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said the Bill had been improved. "The committee has made us look again to ensure that we will have sufficient safeguards in place to maintain the highest programme standards."

Lord Puttnam said he was delighted with the Government's response. A stronger Ofcom would alleviate many of the fears over allowing foreign ownership. But he remained concerned for the future ownership of Channel 5. "I would like more clarity."

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BBC faces fines of £250,000 for lapses in taste and decency

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The BBC would for the first time face fines for breaches of taste and decency under a beefed-up regulatory regime in the Government's forthcoming Communications Bill.The move had been resisted by the BBC as a potential waste of licence payers' money, but will place the broadcaster on a par with commercial rivals found to have broken regulations.

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The company known for Mickey Mouse is now a sprawling conglomerate in entertainment and beyond, and that’s a big problem.

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https://www.launchingfilms.com

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https://igda.org

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http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/74/enacted

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Broadcasters in the UK are not allowed to show anything which offends against good taste or decency or is likely to encourage to crime or lead to disorder.

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Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and corporations.

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Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

Governments and private organizations may engage in censorship. Other groups or institutions may propose and petition for censorship. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is referred to as self-censorship. General censorship occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, and hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel.

Direct censorship may or may not be legal, depending on the type, location, and content. Many countries provide strong protections against censorship by law, but none of these protections are absolute and frequently a claim of necessity to balance conflicting rights is made, in order to determine what could and could not be censored. There are no laws against self-censorship.

In 399 BC, Greek philosopher, Socrates, while defying attempts by the Greek state to censor his philosophical teachings, was accused of collateral charges related to the corruption of Athenian youth and sentenced to death by drinking a poison, hemlock.

The details of Socrates's conviction are recorded by Plato as follows. In 399 BC, Socrates went on trial and was subsequently found guilty of both corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and of impiety (, "not believing in the gods of the state"), and as a punishment sentenced to death, caused by the drinking of a mixture containing hemlock.

Socrates' student, Plato, is said to have advocated censorship in his essay on The Republic, which opposed the existence of democracy. In contrast to Plato, Greek playwright Euripides (480-406 BC) defended the true liberty of freeborn men, including the right to speak freely. In 1766, Sweden became the first country to abolish censorship by law.

Censorship has been criticized throughout history for being unfair and hindering progress. In a 1997 essay on Internet censorship, social commentator Michael Landier claims that censorship is counterproductive as it prevents the censored topic from being discussed. Landier expands his argument by claiming that those who impose censorship must consider what they censor to be true, as individuals believing themselves to be correct would welcome the opportunity to disprove those with opposing views.

Censorship is often used to impose moral values on society, as in the censorship of material considered obscene. English novelist E. M. Forster was a staunch opponent of censoring material on the grounds that it was obscene or immoral, raising the issue of moral subjectivity and the constant changing of moral values. When the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was put on trial in 1960, Forster wrote:

Lady Chatterley's Lover is a literary work of importance...I do not think that it could be held obscene, but am in a difficulty here, for the reason that I have never been able to follow the legal definition of obscenity. The law tells me that obscenity may deprave and corrupt, but as far as I know, it offers no definition of depravity or corruption.

Proponents have sought to justify it using different rationales for various types of information censored:

Moral censorship is the removal of materials that are obscene or otherwise considered morally questionable. Pornography, for example, is often censored under this rationale, especially child pornography, which is illegal and censored in most jurisdictions in the world.

Military censorship is the process of keeping military intelligence and tactics confidential and away from the enemy. This is used to counter espionage.

Political censorship occurs when governments hold back information from their citizens. This is often done to exert control over the populace and prevent free expression that might foment rebellion.

Religious censorship is the means by which any material considered objectionable by a certain religion is removed. This often involves a dominant religion forcing limitations on less prevalent ones. Alternatively, one religion may shun the works of another when they believe the content is not appropriate for their religion.

Corporate censorship is the process by which editors in corporate media outlets intervene to disrupt the publishing of information that portrays their business or business partners in a negative light, or intervene to prevent alternate offers from reaching public exposure.

In wartime, explicit censorship is carried out with the intent of preventing the release of information that might be useful to an enemy. Typically it involves keeping times or locations secret, or delaying the release of information (e.g., an operational objective) until it is of no possible use to enemy forces. The moral issues here are often seen as somewhat different, as the proponents of this form of censorship argues that release of tactical information usually presents a greater risk of casualties among one's own forces and could possibly lead to loss of the overall conflict.

During World War I letters written by British soldiers would have to go through censorship. This consisted of officers going through letters with a black marker and crossing out anything which might compromise operational secrecy before the letter was sent. The World War II catchphrase " Loose lips sink ships" was used as a common justification to exercise official wartime censorship and encourage individual restraint when sharing potentially sensitive information.

An example of " sanitization" policies comes from the USSR under Joseph Stalin, where publicly used photographs were often altered to remove people whom Stalin had condemned to execution. Though past photographs may have been remembered or kept, this deliberate and systematic alteration to all of history in the public mind is seen as one of the central themes of Stalinism and totalitarianism.

Censorship is occasionally carried out to aid authorities or to protect an individual, as with some kidnappings when attention and media coverage of the victim can sometimes be seen as unhelpful.

Censorship by religion is a form of censorship where freedom of expression is controlled or limited using religious authority or on the basis of the teachings of the religion. This form of censorship has a long history and is practiced in many societies and by many religions. Examples include the Galileo affair, Edict of Compiègne, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of prohibited books) and the condemnation of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Images of the Islamic figure Muhammad are also regularly censored. In some secular countries, this is sometimes done to prevent hurting religious sentiments.

The content of school textbooks is often an issue of debate, since their target audience is young people. The term whitewashing is commonly used to refer to revisionism aimed at glossing over difficult or questionable historical events, or a biased presentation thereof. The reporting of military atrocities in history is extremely controversial, as in the case of The Holocaust (or Holocaust denial), Bombing of Dresden, the Nanking Massacre as found with Japanese history textbook controversies, the Armenian Genocide, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and the Winter Soldier Investigation of the Vietnam War.

In the context of secondary school education, the way facts and history are presented greatly influences the interpretation of contemporary thought, opinion and socialization. One argument for censoring the type of information disseminated is based on the inappropriate quality of such material for the younger public. The use of the "inappropriate" distinction is in itself controversial, as it changed heavily. A Ballantine Books version of the book Fahrenheit 451 which is the version used by most school classes contained approximately 75 separate edits, omissions, and changes from the original Bradbury manuscript.

In February 2006, a National Geographic cover was censored by the Nashravaran Journalistic Institute. The offending cover was about the subject of love and a picture of an embracing couple was hidden beneath a white sticker.

Economic induced censorship, is a type of censorship enacted by economic markets, to favor, and disregard types of information. Economic induced censorship, is also caused, by market forces which privatize and establish commodification of certain information that is not accessible by the general public, primarily because of the cost associated with commodified information such as academic journals, industry reports and pay to use repositories.

The concept was illustrated as a censorship pyramid that was conceptualized by primarily Julian Assange, along with Andy Müller-Maguhn, Jacob Appelbaum and Jérémie Zimmermann, in the Cypherpunks (book).

Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own discourse. This is done out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities or preferences (actual or perceived) of others and without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority. Self-censorship is often practiced by film producers, film directors, publishers, news anchors, journalists, musicians, and other kinds of authors including individuals who use social media.

According to a Pew Research Center and the Columbia Journalism Review survey, "About one-quarter of the local and national journalists say they have purposely avoided newsworthy stories, while nearly as many acknowledge they have softened the tone of stories to benefit the interests of their news organizations. Fully four-in-ten (41%) admit they have engaged in either or both of these practices."

Threats to media freedom have shown a significant increase in Europe in recent years, according to a study published in April 2017 by the Council of Europe. This results in a fear of physical or psychological violence, and the ultimate result is self-censorship by journalists.

Copy, picture, and writer approval

Copy approval is the right to read and amend an article, usually an interview, before publication. Many publications refuse to give copy approval but it is increasingly becoming common practice when dealing with publicity anxious celebrities. Picture approval is the right given to an individual to choose which photos will be published and which will not. Robert Redford is well known for insisting upon picture approval. Writer approval is when writers are chosen based on whether they will write flattering articles or not. Hollywood publicist Pat Kingsley is known for banning certain writers who wrote undesirably about one of her clients from interviewing any of her other clients.[citation needed ]

Flooding the public, often through online social networks, with false or misleading information is sometimes called "reverse censorship." American legal scholar Tim Wu has explained that this type of information control, sometimes by state actors, can "distort or drown out disfavored speech through the creation and dissemination of fake news, the payment of fake commentators, and the deployment of propaganda robots."

This section needs expansion with: Television and News Media censorship. You can help by adding to it.

Book censorship can be enacted at the national or sub-national level, and can carry legal penalties for their infraction. Books may also be challenged at a local, community level. As a result, books can be removed from schools or libraries, although these bans do not extend outside of that area.

Aside from the usual justifications of pornography and obscenity, some films are censored due to changing racial attitudes or political correctness in order to avoid ethnic stereotyping and/or ethnic offense despite its historical or artistic value. One example is the still withdrawn " Censored Eleven" series of animated cartoons, which may have been innocent then, but are "incorrect" now.[citation needed ]

Film censorship is carried out by various countries to differing degrees. For example, only 34 foreign films a year are approved for official distribution in China's strictly controlled film market.

Music censorship has been implemented by states, religions, educational systems, families, retailers and lobbying groups - and in most cases they violate international conventions of human rights.

Censorship of maps is often employed for military purposes. For example, the technique was used in former East Germany, especially for the areas near the border to West Germany in order to make attempts of defection more difficult. Censorship of maps is also applied by Google Maps, where certain areas are grayed out or blacked or areas are purposely left outdated with old imagery.

Art is loved and feared because of its evocative power. Destroying or oppressing art can potentially justify its meaning even more.

British photographer and visual artist Graham Ovenden's photos and paintings were ordered to be destroyed by a London's magistrate court in 2015 for being "indecent" and their copies had been removed from the online Tate gallery.

A 1980 Israeli law forbade banned artwork composed of the four colours of the Palestinian flag, and Palestinians were arrested for displaying such artwork or even for carrying sliced melons with the same pattern.

Moath al-Alwi is a Guantanamo Bay Prisoner who creates model ships as an expression of art. Alwi does so with the few tools he has at his disposal such as floss and shampoo bottles, and he is also allowed to use a small pair of scissors with rounded edges. A few of Alwi's pieces are on display at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. There are also other artworks on display at the College that were created by other inmates. The artwork that is being displayed might be the only way for some of the inmates to communicate with the outside. Recently things have changed though. The military has come up with a new policy that won't allow the artwork at Guantanamo Bay Military Prison to leave the prison. The art work created by Alwi and other prisoners is now government property and can be destroyed by them or disposed in whatever way they choose, making it no longer the artist's property.

Around 300 artists in Cuba are fighting for their artistic freedom due to new censorship rules Cuba's government has in place for artists. Recently, Tania Bruguera, a musician was detained upon arriving to Havana and released after four days because of these new censorships restrains Cuba has on artists there.

An example of extreme state censorship was the Nazis requirements of using art as propaganda. Art was only allowed to be used as a political instrument to control people and failure to act in accordance with the censors was punishable by law, even fatal. The Degenerate Art Exhibition is a historical instance that's goal was to advertise Nazi values and slander others.

Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship on their own or due to intimidation and fear.

The issues associated with Internet censorship are similar to those for offline censorship of more traditional media. One difference is that national borders are more permeable online: residents of a country that bans certain information can find it on websites hosted outside the country. Thus censors must work to prevent access to information even though they lack physical or legal control over the websites themselves. This in turn requires the use of technical censorship methods that are unique to the Internet, such as site blocking and content filtering.

Furthermore, the Domain Name System (DNS) a critical component of the Internet is dominated by centralized and few entities. The most widely used DNS root is administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). As an administrator they have rights to shut down and seize domain names when they deem necessary to do so and at most times the direction is from governments. This has been the case with Wikileaks shutdowns and name seizure events such as the ones executed by the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) managed by the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This makes it easy for internet censorship by authorities as they have control over what should or should not be on the Internet. Some activists and researchers have started opting for alternative DNS roots, though the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) does not support these DNS root providers.

Unless the censor has total control over all Internet-connected computers, such as in North Korea or Cuba, total censorship of information is very difficult or impossible to achieve due to the underlying distributed technology of the Internet. Pseudonymity and data havens (such as Freenet) protect free speech using technologies that guarantee material cannot be removed and prevents the identification of authors. Technologically savvy users can often find ways to access blocked content. Nevertheless, blocking remains an effective means of limiting access to sensitive information for most users when censors, such as those in China, are able to devote significant resources to building and maintaining a comprehensive censorship system.

Views about the feasibility and effectiveness of Internet censorship have evolved in parallel with the development of the Internet and censorship technologies:

A 1993 Time Magazine article quotes computer scientist John Gillmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as saying "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

In November 2007, "Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf stated that he sees government control of the Internet failing because the Web is almost entirely privately owned.

A report of research conducted in 2007 and published in 2009 by the Beckman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University stated that: "We are confident that the [censorship circumvention] tool developers will for the most part keep ahead of the governments' blocking efforts", but also that "...we believe that less than two percent of all filtered Internet users use circumvention tools".

In contrast, a 2011 report by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute published by UNESCO concludes "... the control of information on the Internet and Web is certainly feasible, and technological advances do not therefore guarantee greater freedom of speech."

A BBC World Service poll of 27,973 adults in 26 countries, including 14,306 Internet users, was conducted between 30 November 2009 and 7 February 2010. The head of the polling organization felt, overall, that the poll showed that:

Despite worries about privacy and fraud, people around the world see access to the internet as their fundamental right. They think the web is a force for good, and most don't want governments to regulate it.

The poll found that nearly four in five (78%) Internet users felt that the Internet had brought them greater freedom, that most Internet users (53%) felt that "the internet should never be regulated by any level of government anywhere", and almost four in five Internet users and non-users around the world felt that access to the Internet was a fundamental right (50% strongly agreed, 29% somewhat agreed, 9% somewhat disagreed, 6% strongly disagreed, and 6% gave no opinion).

Social media

The rising usages of social media in many nations has led to the emergence of citizens organizing protests through social media, sometimes called " Twitter Revolutions". The most notable of these social media led protests were parts Arab Spring uprisings, starting in 2010. In response to the use of social media in these protests, the Tunisian government began a hack of Tunisian citizens' Facebook accounts, and reports arose of accounts being deleted.

Automated systems can be used to censor social media posts, and therefore limit what citizens can say online. This most notably occurs in China, where social media posts are automatically censored depending on content. In 2013, Harvard political science professor Gary King led a study to determine what caused social media posts to be censored and found that posts mentioning the government were not more or less likely to be deleted if they were supportive or critical of the government. Posts mentioning collective action were more likely to be deleted than those that had not mentioned collective action. Currently, social media censorship appears primarily as a way to restrict Internet users' ability to organize protests. For the Chinese government, seeing citizens unhappy with local governance is beneficial as state and national leaders can replace unpopular officials. King and his researchers were able to predict when certain officials would be removed based on the number of unfavorable social media posts.

Research has proved that criticism is tolerable on social media sites, therefore it is not censored unless it has a higher chance of collective action. It isn't important whether the criticism is supportive or unsupportive of the states' leaders, the main priority of censoring certain social media posts is to make sure that no big actions are being made due to something that was said on the internet. Posts that challenge the Party's political leading role in the Chinese government are more likely to be censored due to the challenges it poses to the Chinese Communist Party.

Since the early 1980s, advocates of video games have emphasized their use as an expressive medium, arguing for their protection under the laws governing freedom of speech and also as an educational tool. Detractors argue that video games are harmful and therefore should be subject to legislative oversight and restrictions. Many video games have certain elements removed or edited due to regional rating standards. For example, in the Japanese and PAL Versions ofNo More Heroes, blood splatter and gore is removed from the gameplay. Decapitation scenes are implied, but not shown. Scenes of missing body parts after having been cut off, are replaced with the same scene, but showing the body parts fully intact.

Surveillance and censorship are different. Surveillance can be performed without censorship, but it is harder to engage in censorship without some form of surveillance. Even when surveillance does not lead directly to censorship, the widespread knowledge or belief that a person, their computer, or their use of the Internet is under surveillance can have a " chilling effect" and lead to self-censorship.

The former Soviet Union maintained a particularly extensive program of state-imposed censorship. The main organ for official censorship in the Soviet Union was the Chief Agency for Protection of Military and State Secrets generally known as the , its Russian acronym. The Glavlit handled censorship matters arising from domestic writings of just about any kind - even beer and vodka labels. Glavlit censorship personnel were present in every large Soviet publishing house or newspaper; the agency employed some 70,000 censors to review information before it was disseminated by publishing houses, editorial offices, and broadcasting studios. No mass medium escaped Glavlit's control. All press agencies and radio and television stations had Glavlit representatives on their editorial staffs.

Sometimes, public knowledge of the existence of a specific document is subtly suppressed, a situation resembling censorship. The authorities taking such action will justify it by declaring the work to be " subversive" or "inconvenient". An example is Michel Foucault's 1978 text Sexual Morality and the Law (later republished as The Danger of Child Sexuality), originally published as La loi de la pudeur [literally, "the law of decency"]. This work defends the decriminalization of statutory rape and the abolition of age of consent laws.[citation needed ]

When a publisher comes under pressure to suppress a book, but has already entered into a contract with the author, they will sometimes effectively censor the book by deliberately ordering a small print run and making minimal, if any, attempts to publicize it. This practice became known in the early 2000s as privishing ( private publ ishing).

Censorship by country collects information on censorship, internet censorship, press freedom, freedom of speech, and human rights by country and presents it in a sortable table, together with links to articles with more information. In addition to countries, the table includes information on former countries, disputed countries, political sub-units within countries, and regional organizations.

Cuban media used to be operated under the supervision of the Communist Party's Department of Revolutionary Orientation, which "develops and coordinates propaganda strategies". Connection to the Internet is restricted and censored.

The People's Republic of China employs sophisticated censorship mechanisms, referred to as the Golden Shield Project, to monitor the internet. Popular search engines such as Baidu also remove politically sensitive search results.

Strict censorship existed in the Eastern Bloc. Throughout the bloc, the various ministries of culture held a tight rein on their writers. Cultural products there reflected the propaganda needs of the state. Party-approved censors exercised strict control in the early years. In the Stalinist period, even the weather forecasts were changed if they suggested that the sun might not shine on May Day. Under Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania, weather reports were doctored so that the temperatures were not seen to rise above or fall below the levels which dictated that work must stop.

Possession and use of copying machines was tightly controlled in order to hinder production and distribution of samizdat, illegal self-published books and magazines. Possession of even a single samizdat manuscript such as a book by Andrei Sinyavsky was a serious crime which might involve a visit from the KGB. Another outlet for works which did not find favor with the authorities was publishing abroad.

Amid declining car sales in 2020, France banned a television ad by a Dutch bike company, saying the ad "unfairly discredited the automobile industry".

The Constitution of India guarantees freedom of expression, but places certain restrictions on content, with a view towards maintaining communal and religious harmony, given the history of communal tension in the nation. According to the Information Technology Rules 2011, objectionable content includes anything that "threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order".

Iraq under Baathist Saddam Hussein had much the same techniques of press censorship as did Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu but with greater potential violence.

Under subsection 48(3) and (4) of the Penang Islamic Religious Administration Enactment 2004, non-Muslims in Malaysia are penalized for using the following words, or to write or publish them, in any form, version or translation in any language or for use in any publicity material in any medium:"Allah", "Firman Allah", "Ulama", "Hadith", "Ibadah", "Kaabah", "Qadhi'", "Illahi", "Wahyu", "Mubaligh", "Syariah", "Qiblat", "Haji", "Mufti", "Rasul", "Iman", "Dakwah", "Wali", "Fatwa", "Imam", "Nabi", "Sheikh", "Khutbah", "Tabligh", "Akhirat", "Azan", "Al Quran", "As Sunnah", "Auliya'", "Karamah", "False Moon God", "Syahadah", "Baitullah", "Musolla", "Zakat Fitrah", "Hajjah", "Taqwa" and "Soleh".

According to Christian Mihr, executive director of Reporters Without Borders, "censorship in Serbia is neither direct nor transparent, but is easy to prove." According to Mihr there are numerous examples of censorship and self-censorship in Serbia According to Mihr, Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vučić has proved "very sensitive to criticism, even on critical questions," as was the case with Natalija Miletic, correspondent for Deutsche Welle Radio, who questioned him in Berlin about the media situation in Serbia and about allegations that some ministers in the Serbian government had plagiarized their diplomas, and who later received threats and offensive articles on the Serbian press.

Multiple news outlets have accused Vučić of anti-democratic strongman tendencies. In July 2014, journalists associations were concerned about the freedom of the media in Serbia, in which Vučić came under criticism.

In September 2015 five members of United States Congress (Edie Bernice Johnson, Carlos Curbelo, Scott Perry, Adam Kinzinger, and Zoe Lofgren) have informed Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden that Aleksandar's brother, Andrej Vučić, is leading a group responsible for deteriorating media freedom in Serbia.

In the Republic of Singapore, Section 33 of the Films Act originally banned the making, distribution and exhibition of "party political films", at pain of a fine not exceeding $100,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years. The Act further defines a "party political film" as any film or video

(a) which is an advertisement made by or on behalf of any political party in Singapore or any body whose objects relate wholly or mainly to politics in Singapore, or any branch of such party or body; or

(b) which is made by any person and directed towards any political end in Singapore

In 2001, the short documentary called A Vision of Persistence on opposition politician J. B. Jeyaretnam was also banned for being a "party political film". The makers of the documentary, all lecturers at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic, later submitted written apologies and withdrew the documentary from being screened at the 2001 Singapore International Film Festival in April, having been told they could be charged in court. Another short documentary called Singapore Rebel by Martyn See, which documented Singapore Democratic Party leader Dr Chee Soon Juan's acts of civil disobedience, was banned from the 2005 Singapore International Film Festival on the same grounds and See is being investigated for possible violations of the Films Act.

This law, however, is often disregarded when such political films are made supporting the ruling People's Action Party (PAP). Channel NewsAsia's five-part documentary series on Singapore's PAP ministers in 2005, for example, was not considered a party political film.

Exceptions are also made when political films are made concerning political parties of other nations. Films such as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 are thus allowed to screen regardless of the law.

Since March 2009, the Films Act has been amended to allow party political films as long as they were deemed factual and objective by a consultative committee. Some months later, this committee lifted the ban on Singapore Rebel.

Independent journalism did not exist in the Soviet Union until Mikhail Gorbachev became its leader; all reporting was directed by the Communist Party or related organizations. Pravda, the predominant newspaper in the Soviet Union, had a monopoly. Foreign newspapers were available only if they were published by communist parties sympathetic to the Soviet Union.

Online access to all language versions of Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey on 29 April 2017 by Erdoğan's government.

In the United States, censorship occurs through books, film festivals, politics, and public schools. See banned books for more information. Additionally, critics of campaign finance reform in the United States say this reform imposes widespread restrictions on political speech.

Censorship also takes place in capitalist nations, such as Uruguay. In 1973, a military coup took power in Uruguay, and the State practiced censorship. For example, writer Eduardo Galeano was imprisoned and later was forced to flee. His book Open Veins of Latin America was banned by the right-wing military government, not only in Uruguay, but also in Chile and Argentina.

Related articles

Freedoms

1. Debra Nails, ^ A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought Chapter 21 - The Trial and Death of Socrates John Wiley & Sons, 2012 ISBN 1-118-55668-2 Accessed November 23, 2017

2. ^ "Child Pornography: Model Legislation & Global Review" (PDF) (5 ed.). International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children. 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-11-20.

3. ^ David Goldberg; Stefaan G. Verhulst; Tony Prosser (1998). Regulating the Changing Media: A Comparative Study. Oxford University Press. p. 207. ISBN 978-0-19-826781-2.

4. ^ Assange, Julian (2012). Cypherpunks : freedom and the future of the internet. Appelbaum, Jacob; Müller-Maguhn, Andy; Zimmermann, Jérémie. New York: OR Books. pp. 123-124. ISBN 978-1939293008. OCLC 812780303.

5. ^ Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism, Ozzie Zehner, University of Nebraska Press, 2012, 464 pp, ISBN 978-0-8032-3775-9. Retrieved 23 October 2013.

6. Wu, Tim, ^ "Is the First Amendment Obsolete?" (November 1, 2017). Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-573. Also available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3096337 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3096337

7. ^ Freedberg, David. "The Fear of Art: How Censorship Becomes Iconoclasm". Social Research. 83: 67-99 - via eHOST.

8. ^ Ashley, John; Jayousi, Nedal (December 2013). "The Connection between Palestinian Culture and the Conflict" (PDF). Discourse, Culture, and Education in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. netanya.ac.il (Report). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Israel Office. p. 55. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 February 2019. In 1980, Israel banned art exhibitions and paintings of "political significance", with the grouping of the four colours of the Palestinian flag in any one painting also forbidden.

9. ^ "censorship-reports-nigeria-abachas-media-crackdown-apr-1997-35-pp". doi:10.1163/2210-7975_hrd-2210-0161.

10. ^ Internet Enemies, Reporters Without Borders (Paris), 12 March 2012 Archived March 23, 2012, at the Wayback Machine

11. ^ Freedom of Connection, Freedom of Expression: The Changing Legal and Regulatory Ecology Shaping the Internet, Dutton, William H.; Dopatka, Anna; Law, Ginette; Nash, Victoria, Division for Freedom of Expression, Democracy and Peace, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Paris, 2011, 103 pp., ISBN 978-92-3-104188-4

12. ^ For the BBC poll Internet users are those who used the Internet within the previous six months.

13. ^ King, Gary; Pan, Jennifer (2014). "Reverse-engineering censorship in China: Randomized experimentation and participant observation". Science. 345 (6199): 1251722. doi:10.1126/science.1251722. PMID 25146296. S2CID 5398090.

14. ^ Shao, Li (11/01/2018). "The Dilemma of Criticism: Disentangling the Determinants of Media Censorship in China". Journal of East Asian Studies. 18 (3): 279-297. doi:10.1017/jea.2018.19.

15. Byrd P. ^ "It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt: the effectiveness of proposed video game regulation." Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine Houston Law Review 2007. Accessed 19 March 2007.

16. ^ "Online Censorship : Ubiquitous Big Brother, witchhunt for dissidents", WeFightCensorship.org, Reporters Without Borders, retrieved 12 March 2013

17. ^ Winkler, David (11 July 2002). "Journalists Thrown 'Into the Buzzsaw'". CommonDreams.org. Archived from the original on August 4, 2007.

18. ^ "Going online in Cuba: Internet under surveillance" (PDF). Reporters Without Borders. 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-03.

19. "^ The Constitution of India Archived 24 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine" 658.79 KiB, India Code. Retrieved 3 June 2006.

20. ^ "Check law first, Karpal asks Penang government over decree banning 'Islamic words'". Malaysia Insider. Archived from the original on 2014-01-15.

21. ^ "Penang mufti outlaws 40 words to non-Muslims". New Straits Times. 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-01-11.

22. B92, 19/02/2015. Retrieved 12/10/2016

23. ^ Die Tageszeitung:Die Pampigkeit des Herrn Vučić - In Serbien werden Internetseiten attackiert, Blogs gesperrt und Blogger festgenommen. Die Betroffenen berichteten wohl zu kritisch über die Regierung (German) - The stroppiness of Mr. Vučić - In Serbia being attacked websites, blocked blogs and arrested bloggers. The victims reported probably too critical about the government

24. Die Tageszeitung:^ "Serbische Regierung zensiert Medien - Ein Virus namens Zensur", taz.de; accessed 9 December 2015.(in German)

25. ^ "Fresh Off Worldwide Attention for Joining Obama's Book Collection, Uruguayan Author Eduardo Galeano Returns with "Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone"". Democracynow.org. 28 May 2009.

Crampton, R. J. (1997), Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century and After, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-16422-1

Major, Patrick; Mitter, Rana (2004), "East is East and West is West?", in Major, Patrick (ed.), Across the Blocs: Exploring Comparative Cold War Cultural and Social History, Taylor & Francis, Inc., ISBN 978-0-7146-8464-2

Abbott, Randy. "A Critical Analysis of the Library-Related Literature Concerning Censorship in Public Libraries and Public School Libraries in the United States During the 1980s." Project for degree of Education Specialist, University of South Florida, December 1987.

Birmingham, Kevin, "The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses", London (Head of Zeus Ltd), 2014, ISBN 978-1594203367

Burress, Lee. Battle of the Books. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1989.

Butler, Judith, "Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative"(1997)

Foucault, Michel, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman. Philosophy, Culture: interviews and other writings 1977-1984 (New York/London: 1988, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-90082-4) (The text Sexual Morality and the Law is Chapter 16 of the book).

Gilbert, Nora. "Better Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films, and the Benefits of Censorship." Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013.

Wittern-Keller, Laura. Freedom of the Screen: Legal Challenges to State Film Censorship, 1915-1981. University Press of Kentucky 2008

Hoffman, Frank. "Intellectual Freedom and Censorship." Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1989.

Mathiesen, Kay Censorship and Access to Information Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics, Kenneth E. Himma, Herman T. Tavani, eds., John Wiley and Sons, New York, 2008

National Coalition against Censorship (NCAC). "Books on Trial: A Survey of Recent Cases." January 1985.

Parker, Alison M. (1997). "Purifying America: Women, Cultural Reform, and Pro-Censorship Activism, 1873-1933," University of Illinois Press.

Biltereyst, Daniel, ed. Silencing Cinema. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013.

Ringmar, Erik A Blogger's Manifesto: Free Speech and Censorship in the Age of the Internet (London: Anthem Press, 2007)

Terry, John David II. "Censorship: Post Pico." In "School Law Update, 1986," edited by Thomas N. Jones and Darel P. Semler.

Silber, Radomír. Partisan media and modern censorship: media influence on Czech political partisanship and the media's creation of limits to public opposition and control of exercising power in the Czech Republic in the 1990s. First edition. Brno: Tribun EU, 2017. 86 stran. Librix.eu. ISBN 978-80-263-1174-4.

Silber, Radomír. (2018) On Modern Censorship in Public Service Broadcasting. Cultural and Religious Studies, Volume 3, 2018, ISSN 2328-2177.

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Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. Governments and private organizations may engage in censorship. Other groups or institutions may propose and petition for censorship.

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The theory of consumer choice is the branch of microeconomics that relates preferences to consumption expenditures and to consumer demand curves. It analyzes how consumers maximize the desirability of their consumption as measured by their preferences subject to limitations on their expenditures, by maximizing utility subject to a consumer budget constraint.[1]

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The theory of consumer choice is the branch of microeconomics that relates preferences to consumption expenditures and to consumer demand curves. It analyzes how consumers maximize the desirability of their consumption as measured by their preferences subject to limitations on their expenditures, by maximizing utility subject to a consumer budget constraint.

Consumption is separated from production, logically, because two different economic agents are involved. In the first case consumption is by the primary individual; in the second case, a producer might make something that he would not consume himself. Therefore, different motivations and abilities are involved. The models that make up consumer theory are used to represent prospectively observable demand patterns for an individual buyer on the hypothesis of constrained optimization. Prominent variables used to explain the rate at which the good is purchased (demanded) are the price per unit of that good, prices of related goods, and wealth of the consumer.

The law of demand states that the rate of consumption falls as the price of the good rises, even when the consumer is monetarily compensated for the effect of the higher price; this is called the substitution effect. As the price of a good rises, consumers will substitute away from that good, choosing more of other alternatives. If no compensation for the price rise occurs, as is usual, then the decline in overall purchasing power due to the price rise leads, for most goods, to a further decline in the quantity demanded; this is called the income effect.

In addition, as the wealth of the individual rises, demand for most products increases, shifting the demand curve higher at all possible prices.

The basic problem of consumer theory takes the following inputs:

The consumption set C - the set of all bundles that the consumer could conceivably consume.

A preference relation over the bundles of C. This preference relation can be described as an ordinal utility function, describing the utility that the consumer derives from each bundle.

A price system, which is a function assigning a price to each bundle.

An initial endowment, which is a bundle from C that the consumer initially holds. The consumer can sell all or some of his initial bundle in the given prices, and can buy another bundle in the given prices. He has to decide which bundle to buy, under the given prices and budget, in order to maximize his utility.

Consider an economy with two types of homogeneous divisible goods, traditionally called X and Y.

The consumption set is , i.e. the set of all pairs where and . Each bundle contains a non-negative quantity of good X and a non-negative quantity of good Y.

A typical preference relation in this universe can be represented by a set of indifference curves. Each curve represents a set of bundles that give the consumer the same utility. A typical utility function is the Cobb-Douglas function: , whose indifference curves look like in the figure below.

A typical price system assigns a price to each type of good, such that the cost of bundle is .

A typical initial endowment is just a fixed income, which along with the prices implies a budget constraint. The consumer can choose any point on or below the budget constraint line BC In the diagram. This line is downward sloped and linear since it represents the boundary of the inequality . In other words, the amount spent on both goods together is less than or equal to the income of the consumer.

The consumer will choose the indifference curve with the highest utility that is attainable within his budget constraint. Every point on indifference curve I3 is outside his budget constraint so the best that he can do is the single point on I2 where the latter is tangent to his budget constraint. He will purchase X* of good X and Y* of good Y.

Indifference curve analysis begins with the utility function. The utility function is treated as an index of utility. All that is necessary is that the utility index change as more preferred bundles are consumed.

Indifference curves are typically numbered with the number increasing as more preferred bundles are consumed. The numbers have no cardinal significance; for example if three indifference curves are labeled 1, 4, and 16 respectively that means nothing more than the bundles "on" indifference curve 4 are more preferred than the bundles "on" indifference curve 1.

Income effect and price effect deal with how the change in price of a commodity changes the consumption of the good. The theory of consumer choice examines the trade-offs and decisions people make in their role as consumers as prices and their income changes.

As a second example, consider an economy which consists of a large land-estate L.

The consumption set is , i.e. the set of all subsets of L (all land parcels).

A typical preference relation in this universe can be represented by a utility function which assigns, to each land parcel, its total "fertility" (the total amount of grain that can be grown in that land).

A typical price system assigns a price to each land parcel, based on its area.

A typical initial endowment is either a fixed income, or an initial parcel which the consumer can sell and buy another parcel.[3]

The indifference curves and budget constraint can be used to predict the effect of changes to the budget constraint. The graph below shows the effect of a price increase for good Y. If the price of Y increases, the budget constraint will pivot from BC2 to BC1. Notice that because the price of X does not change, the consumer can still buy the same amount of X if he or she chooses to buy only good X. On the other hand, if the consumer chooses to buy only good Y, he or she will be able to buy less of good Y because its price has increased.

To maximize the utility with the reduced budget constraint, BC1, the consumer will re-allocate consumption to reach the highest available indifference curve which BC1 is tangent to. As shown on the diagram below, that curve is I1, and therefore the amount of good Y bought will shift from Y2 to Y1, and the amount of good X bought to shift from X2 to X1. The opposite effect will occur if the price of Y decreases causing the shift from BC2 to BC3, and I2 to I3.

If these curves are plotted for many different prices of good Y, a demand curve for good Y can be constructed. The diagram below shows the demand curve for good Y as its price varies. Alternatively, if the price for good Y is fixed and the price for good X is varied, a demand curve for good X can be constructed.

Another important item that can change is the money income of the consumer. The income effect is the phenomenon observed through changes in purchasing power. It reveals the change in quantity demanded brought by a change in real income. Graphically, as long as the prices remain constant, changing income will create a parallel shift of the budget constraint. Increasing the income will shift the budget constraint right since more of both can be bought, and decreasing income will shift it left.

Depending on the indifference curves, as income increases, the amount purchased of a good can either increase, decrease or stay the same. In the diagram below, good Y is a normal good since the amount purchased increased as the budget constraint shifted from BC1 to the higher income BC2. Good X is an inferior good since the amount bought decreased as the income increases.

is the change in the demand for good 1 when we change income from to , holding the price of good 1 fixed at :

Every price change can be decomposed into an income effect and a substitution effect; the price effect is the sum of substitution and income effects.

The substitution effect is the change in demands resulting from a price change that alters the slope of the budget constraint but leaves the consumer on the same indifference curve. In other words, it illustrates the consumer's new consumption basket after the price change while being compensated as to allow the consumer to be as happy as he or she was previously. By this effect, the consumer is posited to substitute toward the good that becomes comparatively less expensive. In the illustration below this corresponds to an imaginary budget constraint denoted SC being tangent to the indifference curve I1. Then the income effect from the rise in purchasing power from a price fall reinforces the substitution effect. If the good is an inferior good, then the income effect will offset in some degree the substitution effect. If the income effect for an inferior good is sufficiently strong, the consumer will buy less of the good when it becomes less expensive, a Giffen good (commonly believed to be a rarity).

The substitution effect, , is the change in the amount demanded for when the price of good falls from to (represented by the budget constraint shifting from BC1 to BC2 and thus increasing purchasing power) and, at the same time, the money income falls from to to keep the consumer at the same level of utility on :

The substitution effect increases the amount demanded of good from to in the diagram. In the example shown, the income effect of the fall in partly offsets the substitution effect as the amount demanded of in the absence of an offsetting income change ends up at thus the income effect from the rise in purchasing power due to the price drop is that the quantity demanded of goes from to . The total effect of the price drop on quantity demanded is the sum of the substitution effect and the income effect.

The behavioral assumption of the consumer theory proposed herein is that all consumers seek to maximize utility. In the mainstream economics tradition, this activity of maximizing utility has been deemed as the "rational" behavior of decision makers. More specifically, in the eyes of economists, all consumers seek to maximize a utility function subject to a budgetary constraint. In other words, economists assume that consumers will always choose the "best" bundle of goods they can afford. Consumer theory is therefore based on generating refutable hypotheses about the nature of consumer demand from this behavioral postulate.

In order to reason from the central postulate towards a useful model of consumer choice, it is necessary to make additional assumptions about the certain preferences that consumers employ when selecting their preferred "bundle" of goods. These are relatively strict, allowing for the model to generate more useful hypotheses with regard to consumer behaviour than weaker assumptions, which would allow any empirical data to be explained in terms of stupidity, ignorance, or some other factor, and hence would not be able to generate any predictions about future demand at all. For the most part, however, they represent statements which would only be contradicted if a consumer was acting in (what was widely regarded as) a strange manner. In this vein, the modern form of consumer choice theory assumes:

Preferences are complete

Consumer choice theory is based on the assumption that the consumer fully understands his or her own preferences, allowing for a simple but accurate comparison between any two bundles of good presented. That is to say, it is assumed that if a consumer is presented with two consumption bundles A and B each containing different combinations of n goods, the consumer can unambiguously decide if (s)he prefers A to B, B to A, or is indifferent to both. The few scenarios where it is possible to imagine that decision-making would be very difficult are thus placed "outside the domain of economic analysis". However, discoveries in behavioral economics has found that actual decision making is affected by various factors, such as whether choices are presented together or separately through the distinction bias.

Preferences are reflexive

Means that if A and B are in all respect identical the consumer will consider A to be at least as good as (i.e. weakly preferred to) B. Alternatively, the axiom can be modified to read that the consumer is indifferent with regard to A and B.

Preference are transitive

If A is preferred to B and B is preferred to C then A must be preferred to C.

This also means that if the consumer is indifferent between A and B and is indifferent between B and C she will be indifferent between A and C.

This is the consistency assumption. This assumption eliminates the possibility of intersecting indifference curves.

Preferences exhibit non-satiation

This is the "more is always better" assumption; that in general if a consumer is offered two almost identical bundles A and B, but where B includes more of one particular good, the consumer will choose B.

Among other things this assumption precludes circular indifference curves. Non-satiation in this sense is not a necessary but a convenient assumption. It avoids unnecessary complications in the mathematical models.

Indifference curves exhibit diminishing marginal rates of substitution

This assumption assures that indifference curves are smooth and convex to the origin.

This assumption is implicit in the last assumption.

This assumption also set the stage for using techniques of constrained optimization. Because the shape of the curve assures that the first derivative is negative and the second is positive.

The MRS tells how much y a person is willing to sacrifice to get one more unit of x.

This assumption incorporates the theory of diminishing marginal utility.

Goods are available in all quantities

It is assumed that a consumer may choose to purchase any quantity of a good (s)he desires, for example, 2.6 eggs and 4.23 loaves of bread. Whilst this makes the model less precise, it is generally acknowledged to provide a useful simplification to the calculations involved in consumer choice theory, especially since consumer demand is often examined over a considerable period of time. The more spending rounds are offered, the better approximation the continuous, differentiable function is for its discrete counterpart. (Whilst the purchase of 2.6 eggs sounds impossible, an average consumption of 2.6 eggs per day over a month does not.)

Note the assumptions do not guarantee that the demand curve will be negatively sloped. A positively sloped curve is not inconsistent with the assumptions.

In Marx's critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange value, most often expressed as a money-price. Marx acknowledges that commodities being traded also have a general utility, implied by the fact that people want them, but he argues that this by itself tells us nothing about the specific character of the economy in which they are produced and sold.

One can also use consumer theory to analyze a consumer's choice between leisure and labor. Leisure is considered one good (often put on the horizontal axis) and consumption is considered the other good. Since a consumer has a finite amount of time, he must make a choice between leisure (which earns no income for consumption) and labor (which does earn income for consumption).

The previous model of consumer choice theory is applicable with only slight modifications. First, the total amount of time that an individual has to allocate is known as his "time endowment", and is often denoted as T. The amount an individual allocates to labor (denoted L) and leisure ( ℓ) is constrained by T such that

A person's consumption is the amount of labor they choose multiplied by the amount they are paid per hour of labor (their wage, often denoted w). Thus, the amount that a person consumes is:

When a consumer chooses no leisure then and .

From this labor-leisure tradeoff model, the substitution effect and income effect from various changes caused by welfare benefits, labor taxation, or tax credits can be analyzed.

Silberberg; Suen (2001). The Structure of Economics, A Mathematical Analysis. McGraw-Hill.

Böhm, Volker; Haller, Hans (1987). "Demand theory". The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics. 1. pp. 785-92.

Hicks, John R. (1946) [1939]. Value and Capital (2nd ed.).

Binger; Hoffman (1998). Microeconomics with Calculus (2nd ed.). Addison Wesley. pp. 141-43.

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The theory of consumer choice is the branch of microeconomics that relates preferences to consumption expenditures and to consumer demand curves. It analyzes how consumers maximize the desirability of their consumption as measured by their preferences subject to limitations on their expenditures, by maximizing utility subject to a consumer budget constraint.

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A monopoly refers to when a company and its product offerings dominate a sector or industry. Monopolies can be considered an extreme result of free-market capitalism in that absent any restriction or restraints, a single company or group becomes large enough to own all or nearly all of the market (goods, supplies, commodities, infrastructure, and assets) for a particular type of product or service.

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Different types of ownership and concentration of ownership effect the amount of control a company has over different areas.

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Frances O'Grady

Some like to tell me that we have the best ever media, with the internet opening up new opportunities for comment, news and the sharing of views.

But if you were to use the style of the new web fashion for lists to identify the UK's most powerful media owners, it would be rather short.

Just three companies control nearly 70 per cent of national newspaper circulation - Rupert Murdoch's News UK; DMGT (The Daily Mail group), chaired by Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere; and Trinity Mirror. Five companies control three-quarters of regional daily newspaper circulation and five control more than 70 per cent of online news consumption (measured by browsing time).

If we were to do the same at the global level, it would not get much beyond Amazon, Google, YouTube and Facebook. So, despite the proliferation of websites and social media, power and influence is still concentrated in the hands of the few - super-rich billionaires, multinational corporations and governments.

That is why the TUC is joining the National Union of Journalists and a range of civil and media campaigning groups to support the European Initiative for Media Pluralism. This is a grassroots campaign to secure enough signatures to force a European debate on tackling media ownership concentration.

When you have the Greek government pulling the plug on its public service broadcaster, Turkish TV showing a documentary about penguins as Taksim Square erupts and its Prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying he would "wipe out Twitter", an international campaign is vital to support a free and lively press.

It cannot be right that a prime minister of Italy, Berlusconi, owned a huge chunk of the Italian media. The Bulgarian media is dominated by Delyan Peevski, who was appointed head of the national security service in 2013, until protests led to the decision being reversed.

A mature, vibrant democracy needs citizens that have access to a range of arguments, news, information and opinions. International studies show the best-functioning democracies - those least susceptible to political and business corruption - have many newspapers and an independent media,

The TUC has nearly six million members, but that is rarely reflected in the media. Trade union leaders and their members are just one of the groups that are routinely treated as outsiders, ripe for caricature rather than fair reporting. And we have it much better than some other groups such as benefit claimants and migrants.

The Leveson Inquiry showed exactly how concentration of media power, in a few pairs of hands, corrupted the relationship between politicians and the press and the police.

Politicians of all parties paid homage at the court of Rupert Murdoch - understandable when his newspapers made up 37 per cent of the newspaper market and whose boast was that they could deliver election results.

If the phone hacking scandal had not put paid to his bid for BskyB, the merged company would have had a reach of 52 per cent of the adult population. And the scary news is that with his son, Lachlan, appointed to a top role in the Murdoch empire, he is about to launch another bid.

The power of the newspaper tycoon is not new. In 2008, the House of Lords select committee on communications heard evidence from former editors of a number of national newspapers who said the media moguls Robert Maxwell, Conrad Black and the Barclay brothers openly meddled with editorial decisions.

That is why we need to sign the petition to demand effective legislation in Europe to put blocks on the concentration of ownership of the media and to ensure that it is free from political interference.

That is why, as the elections beckon, we need to ask our main parties to restrict the market share of media owners, make their acquisitions subject to public interest test and to promote policies for a fair and free press which represents all people, not just billionaires.
Frances O'Grady is the general secretary of the Trade Union Congress.
You can access the petition on the website of the Coalition for Media Pluralism.

Reclaim the media: UK Coalition for media pluralism, has organised a public meeting on Monday 28 April, at the House of Commons, with speakers Tom Watson MP, Caroline Lucas MP, John McDonnell MP and Michelle Stanistreet. Register for a place at the event via the bookings web page.

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Media ownership: power and influence in the hands of the few

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Frances O'Grady Some like to tell me that we have the best ever media, with the internet opening up new opportunities for comment, news and the sharing of views. But if you were to use the style of the new web fashion for lists to identify the UK's most powerful media owners, it would be rather short.

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International Association for Gaming Regulators

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International Association for Gaming Regulators

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https://www.iagr.org/

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https://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/yt/about/policies/#community-guidelines

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https://pegi.info

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Department for Digital, Media, Culture & Sport

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Department for Digital, Media, Culture & Sport

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https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-digital-culture-media-sport

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http://www.pcc.org.uk/contact/

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British Board of Film Classification (BBFC)

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British Board of Film Classification (BBFC)

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 Radio and TelecommunicationsOffice for Communication (Ofcom)

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https://www.asa.org.uk/

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British Academy of Film and Television Arts(BAFTA)

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British Academy of Film and Television Arts(BAFTA)

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Here is an example of a report on regulatory bodies. 

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Here is an example of a report on regulatory bodies. 

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The Manchester College - Media Apprentices

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Regulatory Bodies Rachel Heyes Lecturer The Manchester College