According to the First Amendment, people
in the United States have freedom of speech. However, that does not mean Americans have the freedom of saying
anything. One of the prerequisites of free expression is to not impede others’
rights. That is, people’s right of expression is protected by First Amendment, but
they are responsible for the consequences from their words.
The Internet
has empowered everyone with the chance
to speak. The proliferation of social media has further provided easily accessible
platforms for people to express ideas. But, does
the First Amendment protect the expressing freedom on the Internet explicitly?
It is not hard to find news reports talking about people who said improper words in social media and were arrested. For
example,
is a young man named Dakkari posted a
tweet “100 RT’s and I’ll shoot someone walking”, with a picture of gun on Mar.
12, 2014. He was arrested for making criminal threats. Dakkari said that his
goal of this tweet was to get 100 retweets. Yes, his goal achieved while he was
charged. In the article “Examining
the new importance of ‘where’ we speak”, Gene Policinski discussed that the First
Amendment does not protect expressions that are “true threats.”
Considering the different communication ways between real world
expression and online expression, it is important to figure out the boundary of
the freedom of expression in both situations. In my opinion, although people’s
behaviors on social media are intimately related to their actual social circle,
there are still differences between expressing online and saying something in
the physical world. One reason for this
difference is that audiences behind the Internet are unknowable, so that it is hard
to evaluate the possible influence of one’s words on the Internet. For
instance, Dakkari was arrested for “joking” on Twitter. His threating tweet was
retweeted over 100 times, which was likely beyond his control. On the contrary,
it might be acceptable to speak the same joke in front of his friends, because it
is easier to control words’ influences to audiences in a face-to-face setting.
However, different from yelling “fire” in a crowded baseball stadium,
the influence of online speaking is also unknowable. If we think Dakkari’s words were threatening
to the public, what is the threat? How do we know people took their online
expression seriously and were “threatened” by their words? Moreover, as one
question mentioned in the Policinski article, should people who retweet
the threatening tweets also be punished? These issues still need to be clarified specifically.
I definitely agree with you on this topic, especially in today’s world with the rapid growth and constant use of social media. The hardest part about speech in media is to understand whether it is a true threat or not. My mother always taught me that whatever I posted on to social media needed to be thoroughly thought through. She also said make sure you’re not going to regret what you are going to say, because anything you put on there is for the world to see. Everyday when I Log on to Twitter, Facebook or I am just browsing the Internet, I see threats all the time. I see threats about people killing government officials and other people who disagreed with their comments. Is this a true threat? Are they really going to kill government officials? That is the hard part. Where do we draw the line and say enough is enough? When do we investigate it? Because if it goes unnoticed, that is when it has the potential to be dangerous when it could have stopped. I have a friend on Facebook who said he would do anything to kill President Obama. Did he mean it? Why isn’t he in trouble? That was over two years ago! I think it is always going to be hard to define a true threat and will constantly be an issue at hand with the First Amendment and what it stands for.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment, Blake. I like your example about your friend's Facebook post.
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