Mon, 01/11/2021
LAWRENCE Americans take great pride in the tradition of free speech. Enshrined in the Constitution, the tradition is quite different than those of Europe and other parts of the world, which not only provide different histories but the possibility for clashes on what is and is not permissible speech. Such disagreements are especially likely when the largest arbiters of speech today, social media platforms, are almost exclusively controlled by American companies following their own legal traditions, a University of Kansas scholar argues in a new publication.
Harrison Rosenthal, doctoral candidate in law and journalism, analyzed two concepts of free speech from ancient Greek traditions and how Europeans adopted one while Americans adopted another. He wrote how those traditions evolved to the point today where American companies are imposing those traditions throughout the world and the conflicts that result for his study, published in the International Journal for th