Political censorship involves a government preventing information from reaching its citizens. Perhaps the most well-known contemporary example of this is China's censorship of the [[Google]] search engine, known as the "Golden Shield Project", which prevents Google from displaying search results of some human rights websites, websites promoting Tibetan independence, references to the 1989 Tianamen Square protests, and others. A famous example in fiction is George Orwell's novel ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', in which the main character works as a civil servant in the department responsible for altering or destroying historical information which the government wishes to keep secret. The rationale behind political censorship is that the political party in power can protect itself from revolution if the public is kept uninformed. | Political censorship involves a government preventing information from reaching its citizens. Perhaps the most well-known contemporary example of this is China's censorship of the [[Google]] search engine, known as the "Golden Shield Project", which prevents Google from displaying search results of some human rights websites, websites promoting Tibetan independence, references to the 1989 Tianamen Square protests, and others. A famous example in fiction is George Orwell's novel ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', in which the main character works as a civil servant in the department responsible for altering or destroying historical information which the government wishes to keep secret. The rationale behind political censorship is that the political party in power can protect itself from revolution if the public is kept uninformed. |