User-Generated Censorship

Much of the last year has been spent exploring user-generated censorship: the process by which people manipulate social media to suppress speech with which they disagree. We often think of social media sites like Facebook, reddit, Digg, and so forth to represent some natural, if not neutral, picture of the world as composed by collective intelligence. Yet social media may also be the subject of quiet campaigns -- organized organically by users -- to help make some information less visible than it would have been without their intervention. The links shared through social media can be understood as a kind of roadmap, providing a list of interesting destinations and routes by which they may be found. By manipulating these maps, these interventions influence the flow of information through social media, and recomposing the picture of the world they project in the awareness of their users.