Media censorship effort

How this is measured

Asks how much the government attempts to censor media — closing outlets, withdrawing licences, requiring material to be cleared before publication. It measures the attempt, not the result: a state whose press already agrees with it has nothing left to censor and scores well for that reason. Because it is coded by country experts and then put through a measurement model, every value is an estimate with a credible interval around it. V-Dem publishes those intervals; this site shows only the point estimate, so how firm any single number is cannot be read off the screen. The intervals are wider where fewer experts coded a country and in the earlier centuries, which is exactly where the long series is most tempting to read closely.

163 countries and territories have a figure for 2025. This is the most recent year the series covers well; the viewer holds every year from 1789.

Data by year

Source and licence

Other personal statistics