The Ongoing Significance of Martin Barker’s Work on Censorship and ‘Media Effects’

Abstract

This article examines two aspects of Martin Barker’s work: its warnings about the dangers of political censorship of the media, and its critique of the conception of ‘media effects’ that frequently underlies such censorship, central to which is the notion that watching certain kinds of material is directly harmful to the viewer, and thence to the wider society. The article focusses on these aspects of his work in relation to the UK’s Video Recordings Act 1984, and shows how remarkably prescient were his warnings about how it could result in political interference with the work of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), and thus with what video viewers were allowed to see within the privacy of their own homes. It concludes by examining aspects of the Online Safety Act 2023 in the light of Martin’s work on ‘harm’ and censorship, as this, even after multiple revisions, still deploys some deeply problematic notions of harm and also gives the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) a remarkable degree of power over a key part of our communications system.