Censorship by noise

Censorship by noise is suppression by drowning out rather than by silencing. Classic censorship removes a voice. This technique instead floods the space so that certain voices, amplified by celebrity or official status, overwhelm others who may hold better or opposing information. The dissenting voice is never formally banned. It is simply buried under volume, unable to be heard against the amplified signal. Marsh names two forms: the use of status to boost favoured voices, and astroturfing, fake grassroots spam manufactured to swamp a conversation with manufactured consensus. Both achieve the effect of censorship, the disadvantaging of better or opposing information, without the visible act of banning anything, which makes it harder to name and resist than open suppression.

The idea overlaps with recognised phenomena such as astroturfing, flooding the zone, information overload and the propaganda technique of drowning out dissent rather than banning it, all discussed in media studies and disinformation research. Marsh frames it specifically as a form of censorship tied to celebrity and official status and to the maintenance of the authoritative reality.