Free speech and the challenge of efficiency

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2022.102409Get rights and content

Highlights

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    Emerging social media platforms open public conversations to wider audiences and more diverse views.

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    Such increases in network scale and scope have concomitantly challenged older notions of media editorial functions.

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    Public and expert opinion have swung dramatically across preferred models of authority.

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    A current enthusiasm for reinstituting traditional controls are examined in light of market experience.

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    It is unlikely thatlegacy regulatory modes will produce superior outcomes in the new media.

Abstract

Radical transformation has come to speech platforms in the Information Society 2.0, typified by the migration from newspapers to social media. The change has been spurred by disruptive efficiencies in digital platforms. First, information distribution has been altered by near-costless electronic reproduction. Second, traditional bundles -- packaging editorial content of publications or broadcast networks with general-interest advertising messages -- have been eclipsed by competitively superior news aggregation hubs. Third, specialized content, including advertising, has become more easily targeted and better supplied via “long tails.” Fourth, the democratization of “publishing” has transformed “editing” into “platform mediation.” The resulting changes in market organization have made vastly higher volumes of news and public affairs information – from exponentially more sources – easily available to mass market consumers. In so doing, they have rendered the “Walter Cronkite” consensus obsolete, creating social controversy and considerable backlash. Demands to regulate, or re-regulate, are frequently voiced across the political spectrum. Such policies as “public interest” licensing, public utility regulation, and the Fairness Doctrine are here evaluated.

Section snippets

Free speech in an era of plenty

Though the benefits of [the emerging Internet] may be obvious, and even seem utopian at times, the perils are also painfully apparent, more so every day: the pornographic, the obscene, the violent, the illegal, the abusive, and the hateful.

-- Gillespie (2018, 5)

Dramatic efficiencies in the distribution of information have been the key economic characteristic of the Internet. Global networks have emerged that have enabled informational publishing to transform from a one-to-many

A swift history of free speech

News production has been historically confronted with pervasive regulatory controls. Newspapers and book publishing, exploiting Gutenberg's technology in the Middle Ages, spurred governments to license the press, trading privileges for patronage. Among the rents paid were obeisance – “content controls” -- ceding jurisdiction over the parameters of what could be said.

The long road to open markets has been often chronicled. Free speech, and Constitutional protections for a “free press” unlicensed

To edit or not to edit

To many of its most ardent boosters, the emergence of the Internet allowed an information society to form far beyond the standard legal institutions. Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow issued a manifesto, challenging governments (“the tyrannies”) to try to assert authority: “You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders” (Youm, 2006, p. 730). The anarchistic triumphalism was naïve

State curation

Media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Google/YouTube face constant pressure to cull websites to delete information deemed distasteful to users or dangerous to society. These include communications regarding criminal behavior, which is not generally seen as a “free speech” issue and so sparks less controversy, but extends to viewpoints that may include dubious assertions (“disinformation”), threats, and information demeaning certain institutions or individuals. Every instance of such

Conclusion

While the frictions of markets are non-trivial, the relatively open environment created under liberal rules for content regulation contrast vividly with outcomes produced in regimes where administrative controls broadly determine acceptable expression. The patterns revealed in regulation and then deregulation involving broadcast licensing, the Fairness Doctrine, and the Equal Time Rule suggest that major policy initiatives to promote democracy-enhancing outcomes run the risk of confining

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    Hugh H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics, Clemson University; Dunn Visiting Research Professor of Economics, Chapman University (2021); Visiting Scholar, Hoover Institution, Stanford (2022). The author is indebted to Ben Compaine, Jason Buckweitz, two anonymous referees and the editors of this journal for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

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