Form 15 (3/31/86) NSF PROJECT IST-850 5411 EXPERIMENTS ON THE COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF INFORMATION SEEKING AND INFORMATION RETRIEVING USER QUESTIONS FOR ONLINE SEARCHES QUESTION NUMBER: 030 A1. BRIEF TITLE: Creative evasion of censorship in South Africa A2. QUESTION STATEMENT: By what devices and techniques do South African artists, writers, journalists and academics, editors and publishers seek to maximize freedom of political expression (either within or beyond the law)? Presently in South Africa there is a great deal of ferment over the matter of censorship of political materials and artistic expression with political content. Materials once banned are being unbanned. Matter which in recent earlier times would have been swiftly muffled, manages to survive. How? Why? In this dynamic context there is a tendency toward hit and miss publication and prosecution. It is a situation that encourages creative evasion. There is a great deal published on South Africa's press, but the focus is on state control and censorship. It concentrates on legal issues. I prefer to examine the less formal practices of testing the realm of the acceptable, and perhaps, the non-prosecutable. Thus I shall look at self-censorship, "surrogate censorship", professional self-regulation, and creative evasions of state control. For case study data I shall focus on a number of specific issues - The banning and unbanning of a novel, a newspaper editor who prints, probably illegally, the remarks of a banned person, a playwright who uses satire to criticize the regime, etc. Most of my data will come from interviews and an examination of primary materials. But I do need some theoretical background. What, if anything, has been said about these sorts of questions in other English- speaking countries? TYPE OF SEARCH REQUESTED B. A precise or a broad search: Broad C. Research application: Faculty research - Political Science D. Retrieve articles in English only or any language: English E. Years to be searched: 1970 - present F. DIALOG databases suggested: Š