Introduction to Freedom of Expression in an Age of Social Media, Misinformation, and Political Polarization

In January 2022, the Knight Foundation released a study of American attitudes toward freedom of expression, which builds on regular student surveys that the foundation has conducted since 2004. With three other scholars (i.e., Katherine Glenn Bass of Columbia University; Daron Shaw of the University of Texas at Austin; and David Wilson of the University of California, Berkeley), we served as advisors in the development of the national survey of 4,000 Americans that was fielded jointly by Knight and Ipsos. The Knight Foundation study paints a complicated portrait of American public opinion regarding speech and expression, with wide gaps between support for freedom of expression in the abstract and support for particular examples of expression. As part of this study, we put out a call in early 2021 to scholars to submit proposals for experiments that consider how people perceive different dimensions of freedom of expression. The preregistered experiments that we selected, which were fielded by Ipsos along with the Knight survey, reach the heart of the way people translate abstract support into political attitudes and behaviors. This symposium presents the (often-unexpected) findings of these studies. Ranging in topic from police suppression of protests to “flagging” inappropriate content on social media to self-censorship, the experiments measure how identities of speakers, content of speech, and identities of the audience all intersect to affect the way that people apply and understand freedom of expression.