Censor bars

Censor bars, also known as black bars, are a basic form of text, photography, and video censorship in which "sensitive" information or images are occluded by black, gray, or 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 are also used in art forms such as blackout poetry.

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

Sometimes, censor bars are replaced by images instead of just bars.

Illustrations of usage[edit]

A 1965 Federal Bureau of Investigation 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, The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Censor bars applied to a model
Censor bars applied to a patient with Stevens–Johnson syndrome
Censor bars used to anonymise a woman 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
A portion of the redacted affidavit used to obtain a search warrant for former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort, with the signature block blacked out.

References[edit]

^ 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[edit]

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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 e 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 Apple Facebook Google 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

Illustrations of usage[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]