Censor bars

Censor bars are a basic form of text, photography, and video censorship in which "sensitive" information or images are occluded by black, gray, or even white rectangular boxes. These bars have been used to censor various parts of images.^[1]^[2] Since the creation of digital editing software which can apply less obtrusive effects such as pixelization and blurring, censor bars are typically used for satire,^[3]^[4] although they remain in contemporary use to address privacy concerns.

Censor bars may also have the words 'censored', 'redacted', 'private information', 'sensitive information', etc to indicate their presence.

Illustrations of usage[]

A 1965 FBI surveillance photograph
A heavily redacted page from the lawsuit American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft
The censor bar as used by Google in the SOPA and PIPA online protests
Censor bars applied to an academy painting
Censor bars applied to a model
A female Ashkenazi Jew with familial dysautonomia
The Turkish Wikipedia logo with a censor bar covering the text, used from April 2017 to January 2020 when Turkish authorities blocked online access to Wikipedia in all languages across Turkey

References[]

^ The Purple Decades: A Reader, Tom Wolfe, p. 78
^ Context Providers: Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts, Margot Lovejoy & Christiane Paul & Victoria Vesna [1]
^ Banned in the media: a reference guide to censorship in the press, motion pictures, broadcasting, and the internet, Herbert N. Foerstel, p. 208 [2]
^ Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do, Ori Brafman & Rom Brafman, p.108 [3]

External links[]

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[1] The Purple Decades: A Reader, Tom Wolfe, p. 78

[2] Context Providers: Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts, Margot Lovejoy & Christiane Paul & Victoria Vesna [1]

[3] Banned in the media: a reference guide to censorship in the press, motion pictures, broadcasting, and the internet, Herbert N. Foerstel, p. 208 [2]

[4] Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do, Ori Brafman & Rom Brafman, p.108 [3]

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v t Censorship
Media regulation	Books books banned Films banned films Internet circumvention Music Postal Press Radio Speech and expression Student media Thought Video games banned video games
Methods	Bleeping Book burning Broadcast delay Censor bars Chilling effect Collateral censorship Concision Conspiracy of silence Content-control software Damnatio memoriae Euphemism Minced oath Expurgation Fogging Gag order Heckling Heckler's veto Internet police Memory hole National intranet Newspaper theft Pixelization Prior restraint Propaganda Purge Revisionism Sanitization Self-censorship Speech code Strategic lawsuit Surveillance computer and network mass Whitewashing Word filtering
Contexts	Criminal Corporate Hate speech Online Ideological LGBT issues Media bias Moralistic fallacy Naturalistic fallacy Politics Propaganda model Religious Suppression of dissent Systemic bias
By country	Censorship Chinese issues overseas Freedom of speech Internet censorship Muhammad controversy

Censor bars

Contents

Illustrations of usage[]

See also[]

References[]

External links[]