Birds and Bees, the ‘R’ Word and Zuma’s p*nis: Censorship Avoidance Strategies in a South African Online Newspaper’s Comments Section

Abstract

Although linguistic practices in online platforms continue to receive fair scholarly attention, limited research has been conducted on online censorship avoidance strategies in South Africa about online newspapers. We use notions of semiotic remediation on comments on two articles on a nude painting of former South African President Jacob Zuma in a popular South African online publication, SowetanLive, to show how the commentators creatively avoid censorship and to operationalise their right of freedom of expression. Particularly, we show the various ways commentators transform and recontexatualise existing semiotic affordances of punctuation marks, letters, digits, South African English, indigenous South African languages and cultural knowledge to achieve new and extended meanings while simultaneously avoiding censorship. This paper demonstrates that censorship strategies are mostly employed to comments related to: (1) racism; (2) gender identities and (3) sex. As extensive as these censorship strategies are, the potential inflammatory content is intentionally made to be decipherable by participants which problematises the concept of 'censorship'. This paper argues that South Africa is to a large extent still a conservative country that grabbles with socio-political issues such as racism, gender identities, objectification of black bodies and so forth. However the readership of SowetanLive is finding ways to question such conservatism through online platforms and censorship avoidance strategies.

Google-trickers, Yaminjeongeum, and Leetspeak: An Empirical Taxonomy for Intentionally Noisy User-Generated Text

“…In other words, the intention of generating noisy text varies depending on the existence of each stakeholder, and this variation may also affect the strategy used. This typology has been domain specifically studied in online censorship and resistance (Elahi and Goldberg, 2012;Beato et al, 2014;Mokwena and Banda, 2019), but we focus more on the generalized agents of this 'text gaming' (Haapoja et al, 2020).…”

“…Besides, some code-switching may intend to hinder the speaker's genuine message to specific listeners. In previous studies on online censorship and avoidance strategies (Elahi and Goldberg, 2012;Mokwena and Banda, 2019), the authority that hacks the original text is usually assumed as government. Moreover, such authority is not the only factor that users generate noisy text in the online space; Meme is a representative case (Merritt, 2012) that games text with less consideration on being censored.…”

Vraagtekengebruik in gebruikerskommentaar op Afrikaanse webtuistes: ’n korpuslinguistiese studie

“…Verskeie platforms modereer gebruikerskommentaar deur middel van sagteware of menslike moderators wat aanstootlike kommentaar uitwys en verwyder(Banda en Mokwena 2019:1093. Gebruikers wat kommentaar op berigte lewer, wend daarom soms allerlei ontduikingstrategieë aan om die sagteware wat aanstootlike taal uitwys te fop(Banda en Mokwena 2019:1093.Die konteks rondom die vraagteken in elke trefslag is gebruik om die vraagtekengebruik te ontleed en dit volgens sekere kategorieë te annoteer. Die literatuuroorsig het as riglyne vir die kategorisering van elke vraagteken gedien.…”

“…Banda en Mokwena (2019:1090 het 'n studie gedoen oor die ontduikingstrategieë in kommentaar op nuusberigte van die Suid-Afrikaanse aanlyn koerant SowetanLIVE. VolgensBanda en Mokwena (2019:1093 wys die koerant se modereringsagteware vulgêre, diskriminerende of obsene taal in gebruikerskommentaar uit sodat die kommentaar glad nie verskyn nie en deur moderators hersien kan word.…”

“…Banda en Mokwena (2019:1090 het 'n studie gedoen oor die ontduikingstrategieë in kommentaar op nuusberigte van die Suid-Afrikaanse aanlyn koerant SowetanLIVE. VolgensBanda en Mokwena (2019:1093 wys die koerant se modereringsagteware vulgêre, diskriminerende of obsene taal in gebruikerskommentaar uit sodat die kommentaar glad nie verskyn nie en deur moderators hersien kan word. Die ontduikingstrategieë wat beskryf word, behels onder andere om woorde op ongewone wyses te spel; om woorde in lettergrepe op te breek deur middel van spasies of simbole(Banda 2016:113); om woorde uit ander Suid-Afrikaanse tale of slengtaal eerder as Engelse woorde te gebruik; en om lees-en skryftekens op ongewone wyses te gebruik(Banda en Mokwena 2019:1090.…”