All told, outside of a small number of narrowly defined exceptions, speech by students, staff, and faculty is protected against reprisal by public universities. In each of the examples above, the speech was at least partially—if not fully—protected by the First Amendment (although some of the speech uttered by students might not have been protected if it had been said by faculty or staff). Public universities can achieve essential societal values of equality, diversity, and inclusivity and promote civility in discourse while also respecting the dictates of the First Amendment. Universities have tremendous institutional academic freedom to set curricula, build programming, engage in out-of-class educational opportunities, and determine whom they will hire and admit. Public universities need to promote essential societal values in ways that guarantee they are not engaging in viewpoint discrimination or compelling expression of ideological beliefs, ensuring these institutions are held accountable constitutionally and do not impose punishments that fall disproportionately on groups that have been traditionally, and continue to be, marginalized.
Continue reading “Free Speech, Social Media, and Public Universities: How the First Amendment Limits University Sanctions for Online Expression and Empowers Students, Staff, and Faculty”Tag: Social Media
Technological Transformation of the Public Square: Government Officials Use of Social Media and The First Amendment
Social media has opened a whole new world of opportunity for government officials to communicate with citizens and receive feedback in a timely and cost-effective manner. Gone are the days where local officials personally connected with constituents only through pounding the pavement, running county fair booths, and hosting town hall meetings. When and how they use social media sites for official versus private purposes has created a technology-led evolution in First Amendment jurisprudence, but this evolution is one that is providing slow and confusing legal guidance to elected leaders. At the same time, online applications and new social media platforms are being launched at breakneck speeds. This Article will describe the public forum and government speech doctrines, provide an analysis of internet based communications using these First Amendment principles, and discuss blocking and comment deletions in the context of recent court decisions involving government officials on social media.
Continue reading “Technological Transformation of the Public Square: Government Officials Use of Social Media and The First Amendment”Merging the Social and the Public: How Social Media Platforms Could Be a New Public Forum
When Facebook and other social media sites announced in August 2018 that they would ban extremist speakers, such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, for violating their rules against hate speech, reactions were strong. People either criticized the ban by saying that such measures were only a drop in the bucket with regard to toxic and harmful speech online, or they despised Facebook for penalizing only right-wing speakers, censoring political opinions and joining some type of anti-conservative media conglomerate. This anecdote foremost begged the question: should someone like Alex Jones be excluded from Facebook? Moreover, may Facebook exclude users for publishing political opinions?
As social media platforms take up more and more space in our daily lives, enabling not only individual and mass communication but also offering payment and other services, there is still a need for a common understanding regarding the social and communicative space social media platforms create in cyberspace. This common understanding is needed on a global scale since this is the way most social media platforms operate. While in the social science realm a new digital sphere was proclaimed4 and social media platforms can be categorized as “personal publics,”5 there is still no such denomination in legal scholarship that is globally agreed upon for social media.
Continue reading “Merging the Social and the Public: How Social Media Platforms Could Be a New Public Forum”