Goncalves Marcelo S O, Langrock Isabelle, LaViolette Jack, Spoon Katie
Duke University, Sanford School of Public Policy, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
PNAS Nexus. 2024 Jun 11;3(6):pgae197. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae197. eCollection 2024 Jun.
In the 2021-2022 school year, more books were banned in US school districts than in any previous year. Book banning and other forms of information censorship have serious implications for democratic processes, and censorship has become a central theme of partisan political rhetoric in the United States. However, there is little empirical work on the exact content, predictors of, and repercussions of this rise in book bans. Using a comprehensive dataset of 2,532 bans that occurred during the 2021-2022 school year from PEN America, combined with county-level administrative data, multiple book-level digital trace datasets, restricted-use book sales data, and a new crowd-sourced dataset of author demographic information, we find that (i) banned books are disproportionately written by people of color and feature characters of color, both fictional and historical, in children's books; (ii) right-leaning counties that have become less conservative over time are more likely to ban books than neighboring counties; and (iii) national and state levels of interest in books are largely unaffected after they are banned. Together, these results suggest that rather than serving primarily as a censorship tactic, book banning in this recent US context, targeted at low-interest children's books featuring diverse characters, is more similar to symbolic political action to galvanize shrinking voting blocs.
在2021-2022学年，美国学区禁止的书籍比以往任何一年都多。书籍禁令和其他形式的信息审查对民主进程有着严重影响，审查已成为美国党派政治言论的一个核心主题。然而，关于书籍禁令增加的确切内容、预测因素及影响，实证研究很少。利用美国笔会提供的2021-2022学年期间发生的2532起禁令的综合数据集，结合县级行政数据、多个书籍层面的数字痕迹数据集、受限使用的书籍销售数据以及一个新的作者人口统计信息众包数据集，我们发现：（i）被禁书籍中由有色人种撰写的比例过高，并且在儿童书籍中，无论是虚构还是历史题材，都以有色人种角色为特色；（ii）随着时间推移变得不那么保守的倾向共和党的县比邻近县更有可能禁止书籍；（iii）书籍在被禁后，全国和各州对它们的关注度在很大程度上未受影响。总体而言，这些结果表明，在近期美国的这种情况下，书籍禁令针对的是具有不同角色的低关注度儿童书籍，与其说主要是一种审查策略，不如说更类似于一种象征性的政治行动，以激励不断萎缩的选民群体。
