Tag: censorship

2.3 Freedom of expression

The importance of freedom of expression stands out as persons express their opinions or thoughts via expression to try to convey them from one to another. It also plays the role of expressing oneself towards their society. Giving utterance of certain opinions in public space sometimes makes others feel uncomfortable, especially in sensitive topics such as beliefs. Even when others feel this uncomfortableness, whether freedom of expression needs to be exercised to what extent is questionable. Of course, freedom of expression and speech is one of the indispensables, but should it truly be said that since everyone has the freedom of expression and it has to be protected, one can say anything one wants?

In order to protect the public interest, one can think that speech is subject to restriction. There’s been a discussion on the legal restriction of harmful kind such as hate speech. This is to implement regulation in society, which is what I consider as environmental perspective in the respect that policies regulating hate speech is placed outside human beings and try to secure safer environment for all groups of people in a community.

The world has been moving towards protecting the right to speech and express one’s opinion. On the protection of human rights, it often refers to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among the descriptions, freedom of expression is mentioned in the article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”(1). Among the articles of the Declaration which are devoted to protect the rights in universal scale, it is written as above that each one has the right to express their opinion.

From constitutional and conventional point of view, rights and freedom are not allowed unconditionally to be exercised. Some “constitutions acknowledge that basic rights, including freedom of expression, are legitimately subject to restriction”(2). Also, the article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights has the description that it “may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety”(3), and the article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that “Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law”(4).

While looking at the topic of free speech, in the US context, it is mentioned that “the First Amendment has a large cultural presence”(5). Among the amendments of the US constitution, the First Amendment is known as being related to freedom of speech: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”(6). The US has unique free speech culture which is defined in one of their constitutional amendments.

Freedom is one of the most important spheres that needs to be protected. In a society where diverse peoples live in, their different customs and preferences are not tolerated in the narrower sphere. Society cannot help but to see incidents and events happening in it, where people of different interests live together. Even if some people claim the importance of freedom of expression when an incident happens in their society, it is not regarded in the same way by other group of people. In this sense, the difference of context is what should be paid attention to more, or shared concept in communication among people. Shared sense can at least partly achieved by education or other means of communication.

Discourse wasn’t open before as we had some barrier of for example language and distance. After the emergence of the Internet, as regards language barrier, it can be easily translated by using some application on computer. The distance between persons is now virtually able to be close even if they are physically distant which causes conflict between persons. People living in far distant area face each other on the Internet causes conflict in some issues, if not facing that isn’t caused. Freedom and its characteristics of being contingent with others necessitate the feeling for others, but to what extent it is possible to presuppose those who see, from the standpoint of those who express is a further point of discussion.

Freedom one owns is the number and the width of the paths in which one acts. In the perspective of the architecture in which the access to expression is ensured among the citizenry, “Access to means of expression is in many cases a necessary condition for participation in the political process of the country”(7).

While noting the importance of securing the access to political participation, whether the restriction on the expression of citizens in the case of harmful speech should be tolerated is a matter which needs to be taken into consideration. Regarding hate speech, some promote the restriction on it, others do not welcome restriction.

From the perspective of the legitimacy of political decisions and the restriction on expression, one of the arguments is the legitimacy argument. Dworkin claimed that “if we intervene too soon in the process through which collective opinion is formed, we spoil the only democratic justification we have for insisting that everyone obey these laws, even those who hate and resent them”(8). On this argument, it is explained that “legislation that forbids one side from expressing its opinion to the public—its opinion, for instance, that blacks are inferior creatures who should be sent back to Africa—destroys that fairness. It deprives us of our right to enforce laws against those who have been denied a fair opportunity to make a case against their enactment”(9).

On the restriction of speech, what’s been in dispute is whether speech which is affecting negatively others should be tolerated or not. That is the case of hate speech or discriminating speech against certain groups of people. There are people on the side that any restriction on speech damages the legitimacy of democracy, on the other hand, restriction on the hate speech is inevitable given the negative effect on their community.

Even if the ways through which some can utter their discriminating speech to other racial group are prohibited by law, as far as other ways in which the access to express is secured for the citizens — citizens don’t have to use aggressive words towards others to claim their opinions —, it differs from the situation of the oppression of speech imposed on them. One is able to choose the way in which they speak of what they want to tell to another. It can be an offensive words or softened words depending on the way in which they speak. It is problematic that one intentionally chooses the offensive words to insult others, it has the cases that some unintentionally used words which the listener felt offensive. Given the harm that discriminating speech causes, the blockage of the path of that sort of speech can often be tolerated by those who advocate restriction on hate speech. However, it needs the consideration of the impact which restricting the expression of hate speech causes in relation to others before putting it in place. The problem of hate speech in society damages the dignity of people such as certain racial group. On dignity, while Waldron said that his use of the word “is not just a philosophical conception of immeasurable worth in (say) the Kantian sense of würde”(10), he views that “It is a matter of status—one’s status as a member of society in good standing—and it generates demands for recognition and for treatment that accords with that status”(11).

The argument of ensuring assurance in community has positive effect to some extent while the matter of how one perceives the symbols remains. In terms of “assurance”(12) which hate speech “aims to dispel the sense of assurance that we attempt to provide for one another, a sense of assurance that constitutes the social upholding of individual dignity”(13), the speech of the kind unstabilise the society. The “dignity-based assurance is a public good provided to all by all, and that unlike the benefit of street lighting it cannot be provided by a central utility”(14). The cooperation by each member in a community to create the environment in which their dignity is assured is an ideal democratic atmosphere it promotes. Apart from legal restriction, not always one has to exercise one’s right to express. People can choose not to say by having the freedom at their hand based on their rational decision.

To create the space that is secure for freedom of expression is the accumulation of efforts and could be accomplished, gradually expanding it.

Freedom of expression and art is what should be discussed. For example, for arts audience can interpret works in many ways. It enables people to take time in thinking about the contexts and the concepts. It is one of the interesting aspects of art that viewer enjoy thinking about the works profoundly and they may notice the different opinions from their first impressions. At the time of first glimpse, the information on the work that one has is limited, thinking of the background in the work, the viewer can expand the imagination on it and they may change their opinion. Also, at the beginning, what audience feel from the work is influenced by their previous life experience. It could be uncomfortable for some groups of people who visited to see it. Especially art works sometimes send their message sharply towards the world.

Having said above, it is agreed that freedom of expression should be protected. Securing places that artists can share their works and audience can get the opportunity to see them would enrich the experiences they can get in community. However, always claiming that it is one’s right to express sometimes deepens the confrontation with the groups of people who have different opinions.

The oppression on the speech of people have been historically what we have been caring for. It still is an important topic, but in liberal democratic societies where higher percentage of people share the common recognition that freedom of speech and expression should be protected, it may become a different level that one would be better to care about others as well.

In addition to the environmental perspective that, is located outside oneself, one implement and revise the policies put in practice in society, the inner part of oneself is what should be paid attention to.

Footnotes

(1) ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, United Nations, accessed 25 January 2023, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.

(2) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 13.

(3) ‘European Convention on Human Rights’, European Court of Human Rights, accessed 4 February 2023, https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf. François Héran refers to the same article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights in pp.12-13 of his book François Héran, Lettre aux professeurs sur la liberté d’expression, (Paris: La Découverte, 2021).

(4) ‘International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’, OHCHR, accessed 9 February 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights. Jeremy Waldron (2014) refers to the same article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in p.29 of his book Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014).

(5) Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, paperback ed. (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 196.

(6) ‘Constitution of the United States’, Library of Congress, accessed December 9, 2023, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/.

(7) T. M. Scanlon, The Difficulty of Tolerance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 22.

(8) Ronald Dworkin, ‘Foreword’, in Extreme Speech and Democracy, edited by Ivan Hare and James Weinstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p.viii.

(9) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), pp. 177-178. Waldron describes the legitimacy argument by Ronald Dworkin.

(10) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 60.

(11) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p.60.

(12) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014).

(13) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 166.

(14) Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 97.

1.1 Introductory

The purpose of this writing lies in proposing the new, or new connections of theories, to the problems around the topic of expression and its governance. In a civilised society where a large number of people live together, it is more likely to have wider range of issues which need to be dealt with. One of them is related to expression, and the importance of coping with it has been increasing. Expression is one of the fundamental human activities that not only lasts through different media and different ages but it also needs to be properly recognised by ourselves.

Expression is one of the fundamentals for people in society, and a core part in our civilisation. In relation with the concept of freedom which people value, the topic of expression is often talked. Freedom of expression frequently comes to the table of discussion, often having tension among several groups of people. While thinking of the importance in securing the freedom of expression, I came to recognise that there’s necessity to propose an idea to this topic by focusing on context. This finding that made me aware of the importance of context led to not only thinking of freedom of expression but also be conscious that the concept of context is indispensable for other domains as well. What work focuses on includes the inner part of oneself to alleviate tension among different groups of people in a society. Besides the argument on policies implemented in a society such as regulation of harmful speech, this work tries to progress the debate around freedom of expression by highlighting the importance of cultivation within oneself.

This work takes look at what expression is in relation to its context as such that expression is linked with the past that we have gone through, this linkage could ultimately lead to the argument that free will doesn’t exist (as things are in relation to the past). In addition, it is written, not limited to looking at the perspectives often come to the discussion on this topic such as whether hate speech should be banned, but expanding its sphere to the topics of context which is rules and how people built up the world, culture, history of language, information theory, and the inner part of oneself such as sentiment. Without taking into consideration these domains, the discussion on freedom of expression rests too limited and cannot expect the further progress. Freedom of expression is a political topic, and reflecting on it from a variety of perspectives finally converges on the topic.

As regards the contents, this work addresses the question: what is the principle, or the solution, that should be promoted to govern freedom of expression in a society where there are different groups of peoples with different backgrounds? The term govern is used in a sense that this writing emphasises the governance of a community and takes the stand that governance of freedom doesn’t have to be based on not merely laws but also norms, cultures, and others if any which have effect on peoples’ activities.

People’s activity has certain effects on others in the community. In many cases where a society or a community is phrased in this work, it is used to mean it in multiple levels. From the smaller to the larger to give a few examples, it covers a multiple scales of community such as a community within a nation-state as multiple communities exist within the nation-state, a nation-state as a community, international community as a community, and others. In others, there are cases that refer to a particular size of community, however it should be better to be noted that many refer to different levels of a community simultaneously in one description which readers would enjoy contemplating on communities whose scale is different. This is because one phrase of a community is applicable to not only one size of a community but also other different sizes as well.

In addition, with regards to the meanings embedded in the question above that different peoples of different backgrounds live in a community, although there is dispute between globalism and nationalism, the benefits the civilisations got from the progresses such as the transferability of persons, goods, and information from one place to another has made possible the interactions of different persons, different cultures. This is a progress in terms of technology which brought about the benefits to the world. Also, the progress in terms of the rights of citizens is that the importance of human rights are what societies came to care for. Securing the sphere of freedom for all persons which is one of the essentials, however, there problems also arise given that the exercise of a protected right means taking a certain action towards society in which persons of different backgrounds and interests live. The world became more complex and is interrelated, in which an action of person has an effect to the society. In this worldview, this writing aims at analysing the nature of freedom, what expression means in society, analysing how it works (in association with freedom of expression). Its purpose is to find a way to have less conflicts among different persons living in the same society while taking into account the importance of preserving freedom, and what can be thought of as a principle to guide. Even though the focus is put in the domain of freedom of expression in this writing, it supposes the further extension towards other domains of freedom. It demonstrates the potentials of this topic’s development towards other domains of freedom as well as the relationship of freedom and persons’ actions in a society.

The reason of choosing the topic of freedom of speech and expression is my recognition that this topic will continue to attract the attention of people including the future generations presumably without disappearing completely the topic from our civilisation. People express their ideas and opinions in their daily life. It is one of their rights regarded as a fundamental human right. However, while many people came to be aware of its importance, the world continues to have controversies around this topic. The continuance of the emergence of problems related to freedom of speech and expression is partly because of the change in the conditions of our life.

We have updated our environmental conditions by implementing new technology in the past. It made possible that people of different context encounter more frequently in the real and online world. For example, the transportation system spread over the globe enabled us to move to a different location in a short period of time. This made easier for people to migrate to a different country, study abroad for a short term as well as a long term, and visit a different country as a tourist. It is a positive result of development of transportation system in the sense that people are able to move more conveniently, but in the same time it changed the condition of the world that visiting a different country have never been that easy for people in the past.

Also, due to the evolution of information technology, people of different backgrounds are able to speech online without having shared context on topics. Even, some groups of people strengthen their views and others also move on their own way. The circumstances around expression have been increasing its complexity. Not just the problem of polarised views, but also there’s been a situation that at least some social media platforms have been trying to regulate hate speech online. As time passes, the world changes, we have problems that we need to deal with.

At the beginning of 21st century, the world is globalised ever before, people of different backgrounds are more likely to see each other in-person and online. These changes of the conditions of the world due to the updates of societal circumstances require us to think about our world and continue to redefine our world by dealing with the complex issues in the domain of expression.