“A virtual space becomes a home to real-world texts.
Originally conceived as a collaborative concept between German marketing agency DDB and the German branch of Reporters Without Borders, The Uncensored Library was delineated and constructed by UK design company Blockworks.
Combined with the input from DDB’s research and outreach, Reporters Without Borders and Blockworks were able to analyze where Minecraft communities were particularly sizable, and subsequently match these results to countries suffering from a substantial degree of censorship. “For example, in Egypt there’s no free information,” Reporters Without Borders media and public relations officer Kristin Bässe tells me. Mexico is the country where journalists are most at risk, she adds, with governmental and cartel interference often culminating in the death of those voices deemed dissident. “It’s a different form of censorship,” Bässe explains. “People don’t want to publish because they’re scared they will be killed.”