The Streisand Effect

Barbra Streisand is a global name in show business, as an actress and singer, who was at the peak of her fame in the 1960s and 70s. The term Streisand Effect came about not for her entertainer talents but for a pointless litigation and hype which she provoked in 2003.

How is the Streisand effect manifested?

Just to explain, the essence of ‘Effect’ applies to when someone tries to hide information or smother the interest in it, but then it backfires because the public attention increases exponentially due to their actions. Information spreads even wider after the attempts to hide, remove, or censor it even though before the information was not interesting to anyone. 

The first and most striking manifestation of this effect can be considered in the case of Barbra Streisand. It goes like this…

In the 2000s, photographer Kenneth Adelman captured the entire California coast from the south to the north. His purpose was to show how the impact of humans was changing its natural landscape. The coastal run had become built up with houses and roads, the diversity of flora and fauna had decreased, and garbage appeared everywhere All photos of this project became freely available on the Pictopia.com website.

One of the photographs unwittingly showed Streisand’s mansion. When she saw it, she blew her top and considered this an invasion of her privacy and decided to take legal action against the offenders. Her lawyers filed a lawsuit demanding to not only remove the photo but attempted to sue the photographer and the Internet source on which the image had appeared for $50m.

Ironically, before Streisand had discovered the image herself it had already been in the public domain for over a year and was downloaded just four times. When the news of the trial became publicised, the image began to be downloaded so often that the website’s servers actually froze due to the demands made on them – but not before the image had been downloaded over 420,000 times! Streisand’s actions had become a complete failure, with copies of the photograph in every corner of the planet. The court also did not satisfy her claim. To the contrary, the singer and actress was ordered to pay all legal costs in the sum of $150,000.

If Streisand had wanted to get rid of the photo and get $50m in the process, then she had lost spectacularly. Conversely, if she had intended to conduct a grandiose PR campaign for a modest amount, then she certainly achieved that!

In the history of the Internet, this case remains today as a massive failure and as a result it achieved the phenomenon in modern society called the Streisand Effect.

Top 5 examples of the Streisand Effect

1. Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay website is a large Torrent tracker where you can find almost everything in terms of music, videos and the like. However, not everyone knew about it until the British record industry suddenly launched a large-scale lawsuit demanding the removal of materials that infringed their copyright. As a result, the number of users on the day after the “closure” of the site reached a record 12 million people.
2. Samsung and blogger Ghostlyrich. Canadian YouTube blogger Ghostlyrich purchased a Samsung Galaxy S4 phone, which once caught fire while charging. The man tried to change the phone, which was under warranty, but Samsung asked to make a video about the fire for confirmation. The blogger made a video and not only sent it to the company, but also posted it on his channel. Samsung contacted him to sign an agreement in which, as long as he deleted the video about the phone catching fire, they would give him a new smartphone and additionally that he would never publish the video again and never again mention the incident publicly. This angered the Canadian because the company was already duty bound to replace the faulty phone without such additional conditions. Ghostlyrich put out a second video concerning the phone fire incident which attracted 1.5 million views. In it, he spoke about the dubious safety of Samsung phones and damningly criticised the company. Following the video, his story became widely known and that triggered a huge number of complaints from Samsung phone owners about their fears of their handsets bursting into flames.
3. Unsightly photos of pop star Beyoncé. After Beyoncé’s performance at a certain famous music event in 2013, not exactly the most flattering photos of the pop singer were published on a popular music and celebrity media resource. The star’s publicist immediately demanded that the photo be removed. If you don’t know the story, perhaps you can guess what this led to? If you opt for a two-fingered salute, then you won’t be wide of the mark!
4. NeverSeconds Blog. In May 2012 Martha Payne, a nine-year-old schoolgirl from Scotland, began posting pictures of her school meals on her ‘NeverSeconds’ blog, detailing their taste and nutritional value. The blog got its name because it was claimed by the girl, it was impossible to get a second portion in the school cafeteria. Martha did this to support a charity raising money for food for deprived children in Africa. The blog began to gain popularity and other youngsters started to talk about their school lunches. Attention was drawn to this issue, many deciding that Martha’s portions of lunches were indeed small – even the local media made a big thing about it. Of course, Martha’s school took exception to the girl’s criticisms and strictly forbade her to take further images of the school meals. The girl wrote a farewell post about this in her blog and complained that she could no longer help children from Africa. As a consequence, the media and the public were outraged, and the news spread like wildfire. The embarrassed school administration was forced to lift the ban, and Martha continued to blog – and the number of followers increased greatly and, due to this, the schoolgirl was able to carry on helping even more children in Africa.
5. Uber. You’re likely familiar with Uber’s phone app which allows anyone with a car to earn extra money as a driver, and an adjunct app to employ drivers. Many people have appreciated this app, but not all. London taxi drivers in 2014 began to take action against the company as they claimed it was taking away their jobs. With all this sudden extra publicity, the application quickly flew to the top of PlayStore and Apple, increasing the number of downloads per week by as much as 859 per cent!

How the Streisand Effect is used in Public Relations

This Effect undoubtedly has one main characteristic – it spreads like a virus. In just one orchestrated scandal, popularity ratings can rocket. There are many TV shows based on the Streisand Effect featuring guests who try to prove that certain rumours are not true, but as a result receive increased attention and increase recognition. Of course, this Effect is often applied more subtly, with more finesse even, and involves more and more people in terms of audience participation.

How to avoid the Streisand Effect

First of all, you should not draw attention to your problem in order to avoid damage to your reputation. As mentioned, it could backfire on you dramatically. Here are some do’s and don’ts to consider:

• Don’t resort to legal action through the courts.
• Don’t write formal letters of complaint.
• Don’t make pathetic open appeals for support.
• Instead, act carefully, focusing on and estimating the real scale of the problem.

These bits of advice do work but they’re not a panacea for handling all rumours and leaks. When you’re confronted by such issues of reputation management, do please consult with the specialists. Only they will help adequately analyze the situation and take effective measures.

Got a problem right now? Just send us a request for a call back. It won’t take much time and we can offer some on-the-spot solutions to the problem and answer all your questions. Remember, knowledgeable specialists will help to correctly identify the scale of the threat, the likely distribution channels and a plan of action so as not to let matters escalate to the scale of the Streisand Effect.