Key Post #1

 Eight Values of Free Expressions

When looking at speech theories we see that there are eight values of free expressions. These expressions are a marketplace of ideas, participation in self-government, stable change, individual self-fulfillment,  check on government power, promote tolerance, promote innovation and protect dissent. While all of these are important within our government and society the ideas of promoting tolerance and protect dissent are extra important in today's society.

Promoting tolerance is important in today's society because it shows the power the people have within our society. Promoting tolerance allows people to speak out and use hate speech but also allows society to punish them for their hate speech. When someone says something offensive online people immediately respond bashing that individual for what they said this can often lead to other repercussions such as the loss of a job in many cases.  This shows the people's power to decide matters without government interference. This idea comes from Lee Bollinger in The Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech and Extremist Speech. In this, he explains how being tolerant of extreme speech can help ease social and racial tensions. We can see this in society today because when a post on social media includes hate speech people immediately go after that person. We see different races backing each other up when racial slurs are posted and companies punishing employees for using racial slurs and other things. Promoting this type of speech helps all of society work together to rectify situations bringing different people together in a unified effort. In an article discussing his work, they also stated how people using this theory would also allow people;e to be more open to new ideas by hearing all the ideas possible.

Source: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1024/tolerance-theory

Along the same lines as promoting tolerance is the idea of protecting dissent. By definition, dissent is “the expression or holding of opinions at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially held.” Dissent is all about hearing the unpopular opinions and minority views. Shiffrin’s whole idea about protecting dissent was about protecting people’s rights to protest the government no matter how wild they are. His idea is about how the first amendment protects people’s freedom of speech and that includes dissent. Dissent is needed to go against injustice. Similar to promoting tolerance protecting dissent helps play devils, advocates, within our society. Without this, we can fail to see all sides of issues even if some seem wildly improbable that doesn’t mean they are impossible. Protecting dissent helps work towards the truth and solving issues but you need all opinions and sides that people’s dissents provide to understand issues fully. Dissent brings our society together by working to solve issues using all the information possible.

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7s2x0

 

Overall these two theories resonated with me the most. They both put a major emphasis on people’s freedom of speech in a way that promoted the people solving issues instead of businesses anf the government. They both showed the power the people held and how we do not always need social media to censor offensive posts because the backlash people provide does the job for them. Allowing people to come back at hate posts and other negative forms of speech online can help teach everyone and show everyone new ideas and why different ideas are wrong and hurtful. This overall helps to allow our community to grow and move forward away from old ideas and stigmas.