Censorship as / and Social Good
Conclusions
Benedict Anderson assigns the press a powerful role in fostering a sense of national identity through the creation of “ imagined communities ” of readers ( Anderson , 1983 ). My results imply the presence of limits that must be surpassed before these communities can take hold . When less than 78 % of turtles in my model take an interest in the news , conversation between agents appears to be stifled more often than not . This result suggests that the nation building effects Anderson attributes to the mass media must truly be operating at scale before they can be said to be a unifying force in the world .
Adding Twain ’ s voice to the model suggests that he may have understood the power of mass communication and his place within that industry very clearly . Withholding the Autobiography enhances the likelihood that turtles in my model will converse until at least 80 % of readers can be assumed to take an interest in his work . If we place a premium on communication , conversation , and discussion between agents , Twain ’ s silence can be read as an effort to benefit the public good and an indication that he viewed the high levels of audience attention necessary to enhance the level of public discourse he saw around him as unattainable at the moment . Suppressing the text , in other words , could be said to protect his reputation and benefit his society . Should his fame increase , however , publication of the text also has the potential to benefit society . In my model , publication of the Autobiography enhances levels of conversation in the model once the text captures the attention of 80 % of agents in the environment .
Even for an influential writer and international celebrity of Twain ’ s stature , capturing the attention of 80 % of an audience seems like an unreasonably high bar to cross , but Twain ’ s goals for the Autobiography were not modest : “ I intend that this autobiography shall become a model for all future autobiographies when it is published , after my death , and I also intend that it shall be read and admired a good many centuries because of its form and method — a form and method whereby the past and the present are constantly brought face to face , resulting in contrasts which newly fire up the interest all along like contact of flint with steel ” ( Twain , 2010b ). A writer seeking to influence the shape of “ all future autobiographies ” would be unlikely to see capturing the attention of 80 % of readers as an unattainable goal .
What may first appear to be an improbable goal begins to seem much less ostentatious if we consider the conversation dynamics observed in the model from an agent ’ s perspective . Considering activity in the model from the perspective of an individual agents shows that as agents become more aware of their neighbors , information may reach fewer turtles and still appear to permeate an environment . In my model 80 % of turtles in the environment can be exposed to Twain ’ s work when as few as 30 % of turtles in the environment actively read Twain ’ s writing when turtles are given the ability to be aware of what agents beyond their immediate neighbors are reading ( Figure 14 ).
As familiarity between turtles and their neighbors grows , the percentage of agents Twain needs to reach to attain 80 % awareness continues to fall . As few as 20 % of turtles in the environment reading Twain can reach the 80 % mark when turtles are given the ability to keep up with the reading habits of all turtles within a 4-unit radius ( roughly 48 turtles or 5 % of turtles in the environment ) ( Figure 15 ).
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