Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/27805
Title: | The Ongoing Significance of Martin Barker’s Work on Censorship and ‘Media Effects’ |
Authors: | Petley, J |
Keywords: | Martin Barker;‘media effects’;censorship;harm;Williams Committee;Video Recordings Act;British Board of Film Classification;Ofcom;Online Safety Bill;Home Office;Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport |
Issue Date: | 1-Nov-2023 |
Publisher: | Participations |
Citation: | Petley, J. (2023) 'The Ongoing Significance of Martin Barker’s Work on Censorship and ‘Media Effects’', Participations: journal of audience and reception studies, 19 (3), pp. 158 - 183 (25). Available at: https://www.participations.org/19-03-10-petley.pdf (accessed: 24 November 2023). |
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. |
URI: | https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/27805 |
Other Identifiers: | ORCID iD; Julian Petley https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6237-8127 |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Social and Political Sciences Research Papers |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
---|---|---|---|---|
FullText.pdf | The copyright © of all works published by the journal Participations is owned by the University of Nottingham, University of Glasgow, Oxford Brookes University and the University of Sheffield jointly. 2023. All works are licensed using the Creative Commons licence Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY). Please see our page Permissions for further information (https://www.participations.org/permissions/). | 400.09 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License