4 Freedom of Expression in an Age of Disinformation: Charter Considerations for Regulating Political Speech in Canadian Elections

2021 ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Erin Crandall ◽  
Andrea Lawlor
Author(s):  
Anushka Singh

Liberal democracies claim to give constitutional and legal protection of varying degrees to the right to free speech of which political speech and the right to dissent are extensions. Within the right to freedom of expression, however, some category of speeches do not enjoy protection as they are believed to be ‘injurious’ to society. One such unprotected form of political speech is sedition which is criminalized for the repercussions it may have on the authority of the government and the state. The cases registered in India in recent months under the law against sedition show that the law in its wide and diverse deployment was used against agitators in a community-based pro-reservation movement, a group of university students for their alleged ‘anti-national’ statements, anti-liquor activists, to name a few. Set against its contemporary use, this book has used sedition as a lens to probe the fate of political speech in liberal democracies. The work is done in a comparative framework keeping the Indian experience as its focus, bringing in inferences from England, USA, and Australia to intervene and contribute to the debates on the concept of sedition within liberal democracies at large. On the basis of an analytical enquiry into the judicial discourse around sedition, the text of the sedition laws, their political uses, their quotidian existence, and their entanglement with the counter-terror legislations, the book theorizes upon the life of the law within liberal democracies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-404
Author(s):  
Yakaré-Oulé (Nani) Jansen Reventlow

On November 24, 2017, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (Court) handed down its decision on the merits in the case of Ingabire Victoire Umuhoza v. Rwanda. The case further elucidates the Court's standards on the right to a fair trial and the right to freedom of expression, in particular the latitude that should be given to political speech.


2021 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 616-664
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Stevanović

In this paper, the author considers the importance of the right to freedom of expression with specific reference to political speech, which is undoubtedly an important precondition for the establishment of democratic institutions. Free political speech encourages a well-informed and politically sophisticated citizenry to take part in political life. Thus, political speech has a privileged position in terms of legal protection. However, in some cases, the limits of freedom of expression can come into questions, as well as the scope of political speech. It is a well-established stance that politicians need to tolerate a greater degree of criticism due to their positions. Nevertheless, they also need to be protected when it comes to the endangerment of their personal rights, beyond justified political discussion.


Author(s):  
Corey Brettschneider

How should a liberal democracy respond to hate groups and others that oppose the ideal of free and equal citizenship? The democratic state faces the hard choice of either protecting the rights of hate groups and allowing their views to spread, or banning their views and violating citizens' rights to freedoms of expression, association, and religion. Avoiding the familiar yet problematic responses to these issues, this book proposes a new approach called value democracy. The theory of value democracy argues that the state should protect the right to express illiberal beliefs, but the state should also engage in democratic persuasion when it speaks through its various expressive capacities: publicly criticizing, and giving reasons to reject, hate-based or other discriminatory viewpoints. Distinguishing between two kinds of state action—expressive and coercive—the book contends that public criticism of viewpoints advocating discrimination based on race, gender, or sexual orientation should be pursued through the state's expressive capacities as speaker, educator, and spender. When the state uses its expressive capacities to promote the values of free and equal citizenship, it engages in democratic persuasion. By using democratic persuasion, the state can both respect rights and counter hateful or discriminatory viewpoints. The book extends this analysis from freedom of expression to the freedoms of religion and association, and shows that value democracy can uphold the protection of these freedoms while promoting equality for all citizens.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Afdal Makkuraga Putra

Political system in Indonesia after New Order regime has entered into a new phase, which is both fundamentally and practically different. With the growth of freedom of expression and the rise of information and communication technology (ICT), the use and practices of political communication is also striking a fair balance, two-ways direction, no longer dominated by government-only apparatuses. The use of internet and New Media in political communication realm has been pioneered since 1997, and has been growing ever since, thanks to the new practices of local election (Pilkada). This paper will address firstly, the theoretical framework of political communication in e-Democracy, and secondly, the application of New Media (website, blog, and social media sites) in local-based political communication, namely Pilkada in Banten at October 23, 2011. Having analysed the phenomenon in question, a surprising result appears. Even though all candidates of Governor and Deputy Governor of recent Pilkada Banten have used New Media as their communication and campaign media, nevertheless the interactivity factor embedded within those “New Media use” are largely neglected. Keywords: e-Democracy, political communication, New Media, interactivity.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adib Rifqi Setiawan

The Critical Discourse Analysis is often applied to analyze political discourse including the political speech. This article analyzes Grace Natalie Louisa’s Speech, mainly in Festival 11 by Partai Solidaritas Indonesia (PSI), that is exclusively based on the perspective of Teun Adrianus van Dijk. It reveals that we can learn how to deliver our ideology to public. Moreover, we can have a better understanding of the political purpose of these speeches.


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