The Streisand Effect, for those who don’t know, is when an attempt to suppres information itself draws more attention to the information than it would have drawn if there was no attempt to suppress it. Long story short: some photographer was doing some mundane and trivial documentation of buildings along some portion of the California coast, and he photographed Babs’ X-million-dollar mansion. Had Barbara just left the matter alone, the number of people who would have been interested in that photographer’s documentation would have been a couple dozen, tops.* Babs took action to stop its publication, it made the news, and now everybody is looking at that guy’s photos of her mansion.
In a similar case, the Watertown Wisconsin School Board voted to remove a piece from the band’s spring concert playlist - some obscure orchestral piece having to do with the Stonewall Riots - because homophobia. It made the news, and now people who had never heard “A Mother of a Revolution!” are looking it up on YouTube, the town rallied around the kids, and the school board have egg on their faces.
So is what happened here an example of the Streisand Effect, or is there an adjacent, named phenomenon?
*My understanding is that the photographer was documenting coastal erosion, and before Babs’ lawyers got involved, those pics of her house had been viewed exactly four times.
Because it wasn’t an attempt to keep the general public from information, it was an attempt to keep a specific group from information, in a way (although they could have easily found the score online from any of dozens of sources).
I think it is slightly different as they weren’t trying to keep something about their life, secret from the public, they were trying to ban an obscure pro-LGBT work and in doing so made that obscure work far more well known than it was.
I think you’re being a little too narrow in your definition. I would say that any case where an overreaction draws attention to something that would otherwise have been overlooked is precisely the Streisand effect. The school board didn’t want to be associated with something pro-LGBT, and their overreaction made them get noticed and drew attention to the very thing they didn’t want to be associated with.
The more general category of things like the Streisand Effect is called Perverse Outcome - where an action leads to the opposite of the intended effect.
Looking at Wikipedia’s list of Streisand effect examples there are several that match the OP’s action very closely: In Canada, an attempt to stop a sex worker from advertising her services to an army base; an attempt to ban a protest song in Hong Kong; a deputy mayor of a city in Hungary who sued a Facebook poster for posted a comment to a comment about the deputy mayor , calling him “a dick,” etc. All of those received much more public attention than if the original action had been ignored.
As for the Watertown, Wisconsin school board, that specific example fits under the definition of censorship. A government body stopped students in a public school from performing a song the Board objected to. Public reaction to that action was backlash.
Except that before she filed the lawsuit the photo had a grand total of six views, two of which were by Streisand’s lawyers. Immediately after the lawsuit was filed, nearly half a million people viewed the image.
As to the school board example, I think what happened was a Streisand Effect, but unlike in the protypical cases, I’m not sure ignoring it would have made it go away.
Quite possibly the kids play the music, a few parents clap, and nobody ever thinks about it again. I also think there is the possibility that some anti-LGBQ+ parents are aware of the music’s meaning, and raise a big fuss to the school board. If all the board wanted is for it to go away, it’s a lose/lose.
If the board wants to push an anti-LGBQ+ agenda, then censoring is a win, even if there is a backlash. Perhaps ultimately, after court cases or elections the board ends up losing, but right now they’re oppressing those they don’t like, and to them that is a win. If the board is backing down, it just means they misjudged the amount of support for their bigotry.
I do see a distinction in all of those. And it is the same thing that felt different about the example in the OP to me. The Wikipedia examples are all someone appealing to a wider entity to attempt to get something banned, only for the attempt to result in more popularity, and usually the person withdraws their attempt at the banning.
The OP’s version, the thing actually gets banned (with little pushback), and that banning is what leads to increased popularity. It’s not the initial attempt to get it banned. It’s also unclear if the banning got undone.
I personally would still consider it a type of Streisand effect, but I think it could easily have it’s own name as a subset. This one seems like you succeeded only to then have it backfire afterwards. (Also, if it doesn’t get reinstated, did it really backfire? Did the original complainant care about the music being known about, or just not want it played at a school concert?)
I’d say far more so. Some people might have looked at Barb’s house online. But I guarantee NO ONE would have heard of it of they had just kept that song in. Even the parents listening, no matter how homophobic, would not have recognized the piece about the Stonewall riots (or in fact known what the Stonewall riots were, I’d put money on the fact this incident has raised awareness of the Stonewall riots in Watertown Wisconsin by several orders of magnitude)
… and possibly at some point someone would have noticed Streisand’s house and the photo would have been seen more widely. I realise that is perhaps a lesser possibility but that’s a quantitative rather than qualitative difference.
The OP’s example is the Streisand’s effect in my view.