What is the Streisand effect, the snowball from social networks?

When censorship fails, the Streisand effect occurs. It started with a lawsuit in 2003, but it can even happen in politics. And in ancient Rome it was already described.

In 2003, American singer and actress Barbra Streisand advanced with a lawsuit against photographer Kenneth Adelman, who photographing the Californian coast “caught” the Streisand’s house in his images.

As explained, the image, so far, had only been discharged by 6 people, but after the media of the process were thousands to be interested in the actress’s house. THE image has been seen over 400,000 times and shared everywhere on the internet. This came to call the Streisand effect.

This phenomenon happens when an attempt to censor or hide unwanted information results in mediatism and arouses popular attention to this same subject.

In Chinese, before the case of Barbra Streisand, the expression was already heard, Yo piano zhāngwhich means “trying to cover things up only makes them more evidentS ”. In many cases it’s anyway – it’s the snowball effect on the internet.

According to the magazine, even in ancient Rome the Streisand effect happened, as proven the phrase of the Tacitian historian about the texts of censorship to Emperor Nero: “While the possession of these writings was accompanied by danger, were eagerly sought and read: When there was no difficulty in obtaining them, they fell into oblivion.”

Cases like that of the singer Beyoncé no Superbowl of 2013 They were also quite media. The artist was “caught” in video to make some little “grimaces” little favorable during the performance. In trying to leave the internet, the case became viral and still run through social networks with these facial expressions.

There were many cases in which episodes of this type happened – from memes that celebrities tried to erase the hastags eliminated on social networks they generated.

Here, there are recent examples, such as the process of the musical duet. Admittedly, the humorist is auditions of her “extremely unpleasant” podcast, but the episode in which she plays with the Portuguese band singing the national anthem was even more curious because of the judicial process with which the duet advanced against the humorist.

Streisand in politics

There have also been several cases of this effect on national and international policy. Wikileaks case, The page founded by Julian Assange that disclosed confidential documents that exposed secret telegrams between several countries.

The secrets revealed ranged from the war in Iraq to CIA -flight documents in Portugal. It was a shake for international politics and as the US and other governments were trying to eliminate online pages where texts and videos circulated the whole world was aware of the stories.

Here, you can also remember the cancellation in 2010 of the program TVI National Journal, presented by Manuela Moura Guedes, After an edition with a report on the Freeport case, which involved the prime minister, José Sócrates.

For (including to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa) the cancellation of the program was made to please Socrates, but the discussion that followed about freedom of expression had an even worse effect For the socialist-the episode became even more spoken and the case returned to the ribalt.