Abstract
Writers and experts give their view
Staff attorney with the American Civil Liberty Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project
Normally when advocates assess risks to free expression they look to government conduct. Indeed, over the course of the economic crisis, governments have responded to protest movements and citizen grievances in ways more and less offensive to principles of free speech. But as ever more of our expression migrates online, it is corporate entities, not governmental ones, that are making decisions about who can speak and where. Corporate control of the platforms on which increasing numbers of people express themselves continues apace, not because of the economic crisis but perhaps in spite of it.
Speech has proliferated online. Many millions express themselves daily through status updates and screeds, 140-character bursts and self-made video presentations. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and their myriad ilk now host much of the communication that once took place offline and have enabled a good deal more speech in some cases. Having created the forums in which we speak, they now have the power to shut us down.
Of course, corporations have long had some control over expression, deciding what books to print and which to sell. But there has been a change both in scope and in kind. Corporations control the creation, dissemination and continued accessibility of expression in ways that were never possible before.
Facebook discourages anonymous speech by prohibiting pseudonymous accounts. Twitter prohibits impersonation meant to deceive. YouTube bans ‘graphic or gratuitous violence’. Internet service providers have proposed ‘six strikes’ plans where they will slow or end internet access for users suspected of copyright infringement. Through these rules and others, companies, not governments, are now increasingly making the decisions about who can speak and what they may say.
Even if the companies’ standards are defensible on free expression grounds – and often they are not – these corporations must apply them to each individual case, deciding which posts to remove and accounts to close. When the government censors speech, there is recourse to due process – a judicial hearing, a neutral adjudication, application of a system of laws. Not so when a company acts against expression. Corporations are constrained by market forces, indeed, but this is cold comfort for the speaker of unpopular minority views. The market is indifferent - and might even at times applaud - the silencing of these views.
In the United States’ First Amendment tradition, at least, the answer to offensive speech is to let it be countered by other voices, not to wield the censor’s pen. We should be concerned about the power of corporations – unaccountable to the polity and unconstrained by our constitutions’ free-expression guarantees – to determine who speaks online and how.
Writer, broadcaster and comedian
The financial crisis has had an unexpected impact on freedom of speech at the light-hearted end of the spectrum. The sense of negativity that pervades almost every news report – inflation is high, wages are dropping, underemployment is rising – has contributed to an overall sense that everything is terrible and probably getting worse.
Interestingly, in the United Kingdom, it hasn’t provoked an outpouring of political comedy, as happened in the 1980s. Alexei Sayle, Mark Thomas, Mark Steel, Ben Elton: all these comics were inspired by what they saw as a ruling elite taking its toll on ordinary people.
This time round, the comedians are part of the ruling elite. Jimmy Carr’s political bite was much reduced when it became clear that his own tax affairs were far from spotless. The role of comedians as court jesters – delivering the truth at the expense of those in power – has been sadly diminished. How can you be a powerless court jester if you’re playing the O2 Arena?
Running in parallel with the financial crisis has been a collective sense of humour failure: where once we laughed at hypocrisy, and drew attention to it with mockery, now many of us seem to live in a state of being perpetually offended. It’s no longer enough to write in and complain: the affronted now need heads to roll and jobs to be lost before honour is satisfied.
I think we need to take a moment and remember that being offended is not really so terrible. Broadcasters need to stiffen their sinews and apologise for the occasional misjudged joke rather than never broadcasting it in case the tabloids hear it and go berserk. All comedy offends somebody, even Laurel and Hardy. So I’m hoping that – when the economy eventually recovers – our sense of humour might once again outstrip our sense of sanctimony.
Lecturer at the University of Castilla-La Mancha
Now we know journalism is facing the perfect storm in Spain. So what? It is time to innovate and to transform media companies. Indeed, from 2008 onwards, numerous journalists have launched new business projects with more flexible structures that take into account the basics of the digital economy. There are currently more than 30 projects being developed, filling market niches and attending to the new demands of the different audiences.
Some key features are important to underline. In most cases, journalists are the owners, founders and shareholders in the new schemes, which they often launch using the funds obtained from their own severance pay. From their lay-offs. For instance, Lamarea.com (‘the tide’ – an allusion to the growing wave of indignation in Spain) is a cooperative founded by the last editor of El Público, a leftist newspaper. Anyone interested in contributing €1,000(US$1,335) in initial capital can become a shareholder. (El Público suspended its print edition in 2012 – a victim of the crisis – although it continues to publish a digital version.)
The foundation is the digital model. It includes the wide use of copyleft licences and comprehensive agreements with other digital media. One example is the alliance between Eldiario.es and Esmateria.com. (Tellingly, Eldiario.es’s motto is: ‘Journalism in spite of everything’.) Eldiario.es was launched in 2012 – another of El Público’s spin-offs. Esmateria.es, also born in 2012, defines itself as a website specialising in scientific news.
Journalists use their own personal brand names (their firma or ‘byline’) as a business and audience driver. Twitter and blogs are part of the strategy. Digital journalism is not a by-product, but the core business in the newsroom.
In fact, the value proposition of these media outlets is substantially different. There is no single revenue source, but multiple sources. The freemium, the subscription, the communities or the cult product are different ways to sustain the business.
In my opinion, entrepreneurial journalism is a breath of fresh air in Spanish journalistic culture. These companies are transforming the information ecosystem, creating a new agenda, promoting critical journalism contents over infotainment and developing projects beyond traditional media groups. This is particularly important when it comes to local information, since local newspapers are disappearing faster and faster.
In summary, although it is too early to assess the quality or the outcome of these projects, entrepreneurial journalism, which has in many ways grown out of the economic crisis, appears to reinforce freedom of speech and strengthen political journalism in this country.
Wider Europe programme co-ordinator and policy fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations
One would expect that in a country which last year recorded the highest inflation globally and is still struggling to recover from the economic crisis, the streets would be packed with people protesting against the government’s incompetent policies. Not in Belarus.
For the country’s authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, there are seemingly endless ways free expression can be limited, banned or discouraged. The latest invention came in 2011 when, following a wave of street protests, the government banned not only public action but also ‘public inaction’, such as silent protests.
For much of his rule, which began in 1994, the stability of Lukashenko’s regime was ensured thanks to a mix of heavy-handed tactics punishing any dissent and economic subsidies from Russia. But in 2011 this stability was shaken: after the government’s spending spree ahead of the 2010 presidential elections and Moscow’s reluctance to foot the bill, the economy was in free fall. Most of those who attended demonstrations before the economic crisis hit in 2011 were tired of the president’s authoritarian rule. But drastically declining real wages, empty shops and limits on exports of items like butter, refrigerators or gasoline have now angered people previously uninterested in politics.
But how to express one’s opinion in a country where public questioning of government policies isn’t allowed? Creativity prevailed over fear: instead of waving anti-Lukashenko flags (the flag of the Belarusian People’s Republic, dating back to 1918, used in opposition rallies as a nod to both pre-Soviet and pre-Lukashenko times), people tended to just stop their cars in protest, chanting and ignoring orders to move on. And on one occasion, drivers in Minsk simply drove around honking. In other cities, people gathered in the public squares and clapped their hands at certain intervals. They were perhaps inspired by an old Soviet joke about a man standing near the Kremlin handing out leaflets. When the police arrest him, they see that the leaflets are blank. The man explains: ‘Well, everyone knows what’s wrong, there’s no need to write it down.’
But the Lukashenko government understood the joke too – in two months in 2011, more than 2000 people were arrested. Before summer 2011 came to an end, a new law was adopted prohibiting the ‘mass presence of citizens in a public space … for the purpose of a form of action or inaction’.
The 2011 protests demanding that Lukashenko step down offered a glimpse of hope that civic activism and free expression in Belarus would expand once again from the world of the internet, to which it has been pretty much limited in the past few years, to everyday reality. But this has yet to happen. For now, a growing number of people seem to be expressing their opinion not by clapping their hands but with their feet – by leaving to work in neighbouring Russia.