How Does the 'Streisand Effect' Make Cover-ups Go Viral?

The 'Streisand Effect' is when some powerful entity tries to repress information, but winds up publicizing it instead. Learn the history of the term and how the effect works in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. The rich and powerful bullies
of the world, governments, corporations, celebrities, et cetera have lots
of creative ways to control the public's access to information intimidation, bands, bribery,
or straight up censorship, especially when that information makes them

(00:25):
look bad. But every once in a while, and especially
clumsy control effort backfires spectacularly. Take the case of Barbra Streisand,
the award winning actress, singer, and owner of a sprawling
mega mansion near the wealthy coastal enclave of Malibu, California.
Back in two thousand three, Streisand sued a photographer by

(00:46):
the name of Kenneth Edelman because he refused to lead
a photo of her Malibu mansion from an online project
that tracked erosion on the California coastline. Edelman wasn't a
paparazzo trying to snag a shot of Babs in her
bathing suit. He was documenting an important environmental issue. But
Streisand obviously felt that her privacy had been violated, or

(01:07):
perhaps wanted to nip future violations in the bud so
she took Adelman to court for fifty million dollars in damages. Yep,
that's for one photo. The irony was that before Streisand
took Adelman to court, the online image of her house
had been downloaded a grand total of six times, including
twice by her own lawyers. But after the media caught

(01:29):
wind of the lawsuit, the image was downloaded four hundred
and twenty thousand times in just a month and publicized
around the world. For an added kick in the teeth
that judge dismissed the case. Streisand wasn't the first to
get burned by her own attempt to repress information, but
her name became indelibly attached to the phenomenon when Tector

(01:49):
blogger Mike Masnick jokingly labeled the backfire the Streisand Effect.
But we spoke with Sue Curry Jansen, professor emeritus of
Media and Communications at Inburg College, who co authored a
paper about the curious dynamics of the Streisand Effect. She
said nobody had paid much attention to the whole thing
until the lawsuit, which I'm sure Streisand wishes she had

(02:12):
never undertaken. The Streisand effect is a product of public
outrage and blowback over a perceived attempt by someone with
the power to repress free speech to do so. As
Streisand's lawsuit shows, sometimes a supposedly dangerous piece of information
wouldn't likely draw much attention if left uncensored, but the
very act of trying to repress it creates public curiosity

(02:34):
and even outrage, which ends up shining a far brighter
light on the information in the process. It's also been
shown that banning books or blocking access to certain websites
only serves to increase public demand for that information. One
study from eighteen found that China's attempts to block access
to sites like Twitter and Facebook prompted millions of otherwise

(02:56):
a political citizens to download VPN software to evade the
sensors and access those sites. In the paper, Jansen and
her co author highlight some truly shining examples of the
Streisand effect at work, from global corporations to grade school cafeterias.
For example, the fast food giant McDonald's made a huge

(03:17):
mistake in the nineteen nineties when it sued two volunteers
with the activist organization London Greenpeace for a street pamphlet
that they wrote called What's Wrong with McDonald's. The trial,
which the British press dubbed McLibel, became the longest running
civil trial in British history and handed critics of McDonald's
a media bull horn for publicizing the chain's exploitative advertising,

(03:39):
low pay and unhealthy food. And just like streisand McDonald's,
ended up losing the lawsuit. In two thousand three, Fox
News sued Al Franken, then a comedian and actor not
yet a senator, for copyright infringement over his anti conservative
book called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Fox News

(04:01):
alleged that the phrase fair and balanced was its own
intellectual property, but a judge disagreed. Not only did Fox
News lose the case, but the free publicity shot Franken's
book to the top of the best seller list in Scotland.
In a nine year old schoolgirl by the name of
Martha Payne began taking pictures of her school cafeteria lunches

(04:22):
and writing about them on her personal blog. When chef
and TV personality Jamie Oliver tweeted about Pain's blog, the
site received three million hits in just two months, the
local town council, fearing that the grade schooler was making
them look bad, banned her from taking photos at school.
Of course, Pain blogged about the band too, which then

(04:42):
made international news. The town council wound up publicly apologizing
and they removed the band. Then, in twenty nineteen, Republican
Senator Devin Nunez filed a lawsuit against Twitter, alleging that
he was defamed on the platform by Republican political strategist
Liz May and by the anonymous owners of the Twitter
accounts Devon Ninez's Cow and Devon Ninez's Mom. Before the lawsuit,

(05:08):
devon Ninez's Cow had only one thousand, two hundred and
nine followers. After the lawsuit was filed, it's shot up
to fifty four thousand. A year later, the account has
over seven hundred and twenty two thousand followers and has
inspired several more copycat accounts. The lawsuit is still ongoing,
but Jansen says that unfortunately, most censorship efforts are successful.

(05:33):
Quote that's the way power works. For example, the non
disclosure agreements that employees have to sign to work at
many corporations, you can know something really bad is going on,
but you can't tell anyone. Not only will you be fired,
but you'll be sued. Even if a powerful person or
entity is caught trying to silence a critic or hide
a dirty secret, there's a whole crisis management playbook to

(05:55):
diffuse public outcry, sometimes called outrage management. In the paper,
Jansen and her co author list five techniques at sensors
used to discredit and silence critics, covering up the action,
devaluing the target, reinterpreting events by lying, minimizing consequences, blaming others,

(06:15):
and using favorable framing, using official channels to give an
appearance of justice, and intimidating or rewarding people involved. Jansen
said there are pr people who are very good at
doing this kind of thing. They set up listening sessions
with people who are objecting to something, then single out
one or two people and put them on a committee.

(06:37):
Sometimes they even overtly bribe people with some kind of
honorific and then proceed with whatever they intended to do
in the first place. The streisand effect can be an
effective check on censorship and the more general misuse of
power to bully critics into silence, but only if the
act is dragged into the light by a free and
unfettered press. None of the examples we cited above, including

(06:59):
Stresa End, would have happened if not for journalists picking
up the stories and bringing them to the public's attention. Unfortunately,
the effectiveness of the media as a check on this
sort of misuse and abuse of power has taken a
hit during this are fake News era. If politicians and
other people in power can dismiss news stories that make
them look bad as being biased or false, then the

(07:22):
power of the streisand effect dries up. Jansen said, that's
a real issue. The whole sense of what is the
truth has been undermined quite deliberately. Today's episode was written
by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
on listen lots of other topics, visit how Stuff works

(07:42):
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