Americans today face an age of information overload. With the evolution of Media 3.0, the internet, and the rise of Media 3.5—i.e., social media—relatively new communication technologies present pressing challenges for the First Amendment in American society. Twentieth century law defined freedom of expression, but in an information-limited world. By contrast, the twenty-first century is seeing the emergence of a world that is overloaded with information, largely shaped by an “unintentional press”—social media. Americans today rely on just a small concentration of private technology powerhouses exercising both economic and social influence over American society. This raises questions about censorship, access, and misinformation. While the First Amendment protects speech from government censorship only, First Amendment ideology is largely ingrained across American culture, including on social media. Technological advances arguably have made entry into the marketplace of ideas—a fundamental First Amendment doctrine—more accessible, but also more problematic for the average American, increasing his/her potential exposure to misinformation. <br/><br/>This thesis uses political and judicial frameworks to evaluate modern misinformation trends, social media platforms and current misinformation efforts, against the background of two misinformation accelerants in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. presidential election. Throughout history, times of hardship and intense fear have contributed to the shaping of First Amendment jurisprudence. Thus, this thesis looks at how fear can intensify the spread of misinformation and influence free speech values. Extensive research was conducted to provide the historical context behind relevant modern literature. This thesis then concludes with three solutions to misinformation that are supported by critical American free speech theory.

America has been widely considered a great democratic experiment, which is a characterization attributed to Thomas Jefferson. An experiment can be designed to use trial-and-error methods to find a certain outcome. While not a conscious effort, the United States has experienced a trial-and-error experimental process in developing legislation that will restrict dangerous misinformation without violating the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment. In several of his personal writings and official speeches, Jefferson advised against additional government intervention with regard to filtering true and false information published by the press or distributed by citizens. His argument is a guiding theme throughout this thesis, which explores that experimental process and its relation to contemporary efforts to address and prevent future phenomena like the fake news outbreak of 2016.
This thesis utilizes an examination of examples of laws designed to control misinformation, past and present, then using those examples to provide context to both arguments in favor of and opposing new misinformation laws. Extensive archival research was conducted to ensure that accurate historical reflection could be included in offering information about historical examples, as well as through application of relevant literature. The possible effects on the electorate and the practices of the press by those laws of the past and potential proposals for new legislation are also discussed in an effort to provide further context to, and support for, the conclusions reached. Those conclusions include that additional regulation is necessary to discourage the creation and distribution of fake news and misinformation in order to protect the public from the violence or imminent unlawful action they may cause.

There has long been conflict between the First and Sixth Amendments, particularly press freedoms and the right of a defendant to have a fair trial. This thesis expands on this conflict, and potential solutions, by looking at the 2013 trial of Jodi Arias. It further elaborates on what responsibilities the courts, and the media, have in protecting a defendant’s right to an impartial jury. The first section of this thesis addresses conflict between the First and Sixth Amendments, the ways that the justice system works to resolve these conflicts, and similar high-profile cases demonstrating the conflict. The second part of this thesis explains the complex events of both the trial and the sentencing retrial. Next, media coverage of the trial will be compared with how the presiding judge attempted to protect Arias’ rights. By the end of this thesis, readers will be able to understand the evolution of the First and Sixth Amendments, how the justice system reconciles differences between the two and how coverage shifted throughout the trial. Finally, readers will be able to see how saturated media coverage impacted Arias’ right to a fair trial, and what this means for high profile criminal cases in the future. This thesis makes recommendations both for the justice system and for media organizations, on how to prevent similar issues seen in the Arias trial from occurring in future trials. The hope is that through an analysis of the Arias trial, and the recommendations made at the conclusion of the thesis, judges and media organizations will be able to work together to better protect both the First and Sixth Amendments to the best of their ability.

There are certain clear-cut instances where speech is used only to harm, where the context of the situation does not affect or alter the meaning. These instances, however, are rare. The issue presented in Matal v. Tam (2017) highlights the government’s inability to, and difficulty in, attempting to prohibit assumed offensive content. This thesis argues that even in the rare and overt instances, the government is required to abstain from regulating hate speech, and that the government will not be able to successfully adopt advocate proposed hate-speech regulations. This thesis embraces the concept of precedent as the most binding force in First Amendment questions. It also begins argumentation at the most important era of First Amendment issues, and then analyzes numerous cases spanning nearly one hundred years. Utilizing case rulings, this thesis examines the American social context, as well as academic and historical writings, throughout the past century. Ultimately, this thesis finds that the decision in Matal was not surprising, and that it supports a contemporary First Amendment jurisprudence that believes in a strong divide between the government and private speech. The implications of Matal have been almost immediate, with several lawsuits being decided or brought to court based on the precedent. The decision implies that hate-speech regulations, already given little credence, will share a similar outcome to the law in Matal.

The Arab Spring revolutions of 2010-11 raised important questions about how social-movement actors use new communication technologies, such as social media, for communication and organizing during episodes of contentious politics. This dissertation examines how organizers of and participants in Tunisia’s Arab Spring revolution used communication technologies such as Facebook, blogs, news websites, email, television, radio, newspapers, telephones, and interpersonal communication. The dissertation approaches the topic through the communication paradigm of framing, which the author uses to tie together theories of social movements, neo-patrimonialism, and revolution. The author traveled to Tunisia and conducted 44 interviews with organizers and participants about their uses of communication media, the frames they constructed and deployed, their framing strategies, their organizing activities, and their experiences of the revolution. The most common frames were those of the regime’s corruption, economic issues, and the security forces’ brutality. Interviewees deployed a hybrid network of media to disseminate these frames; Facebook represented a single node in the network, though many interviewees used it more than any other node. To explain the framing process and the resonance of the frames deployed by revolutionaries, the dissertation creates the concept of the alternative narrative, which describes how revolutionaries used a hybrid network to successfully construct an alternative to the narrative constructed by the regime. The dissertation also creates the concept of authoritarian weakening, to explain how citizens can potentially weaken neo-patrimonial regimes under conditions concerning corruption, poverty, and the introduction of civil society and of new communication technologies.

The term “female sportscaster” elicits a broad range of feelings among the sports media consumer base. Many of the women who fall into the category of “female sportscaster” appear to be greatly admired while many others evoke considerable scorn, making the electronic sports media industry a seemingly dangerous and often vitriolic environment for women. The gendered mistreatment of women sportscasters is not unfamiliar to sports media scholars. Indeed, phenomena such as sex biases, double standards, and harassment have been documented, primarily through positivistic or quantitative research. What has not been investigated, however, is how these phenomena persist and evolve despite the extant research.

This dissertation employs Michel Foucault’s power/knowledge paradigm to take a discursive analytic approach to understand how the “female sportscaster” subjectivity, or imagined idea, is constructed through statements, images, and practices. That is, this dissertation investigates the way society “talks about” the “female sportscaster” and how those discussions affect the experiences of women sportscasters. Using one-on-one interviews with 10 women sportscasters, focus groups with sports media consumers, netnography, and textual analysis under the umbrella of a feminist methodological approach, this dissertation finds that the American female subjectivity is constructed through postfeminist and neoliberal discourses. These discourses “empower” women sportscasters to be responsible for their own success but, in doing so, normalize the obstacles women in sportscasting endure.

As a result of this normalization, the electronic sports media industry is seemingly justified in taking little to no meaningful action toward improving conditions for women sportscasters. Specific manifestations of these discourses are traced across phenomena such as double standards, bias in hiring and development, harassment, and the expectation of affective labor. Suggestions are made for improving conditions for women sportscasters.

The purpose of this study is to explore the shifting cultural norms of copyright law, and that concept’s impact on the performance and practice of artists producing original works of authorship. Although related concepts predate it, and today it exists as a subset of a broader category known as intellectual property, the purpose of copyright beginning with the United States Constitution was to allow for a temporary economic monopoly to an author of a fixed creative work. This monopoly was meant to incentivize authors to contribute to the public good with works that promote progress in science and art. However, increases over time in the scope and duration of copyright terms grant broader protections and controls for copyright owners today, while advances in technology have provided the public with the potential for near-limitless low-cost access to information. This creates a conflict between proprietary interest in creative works and the public’s right and ability to access and build on those works. The history of copyright law in America is rife with efforts to balance these competing interests.

The methodology for this study consisted of flexible strategies for collecting and analyzing data, primarily elite, semi-structured interviews with professional artists, attorneys, and others who engage with the cultural and legal norms of intellectual property regimes on a regular basis. Constant comparative analysis was used to maintain an emic perspective, prioritizing the subjective experience of individuals interviewed for this research project. Additional methods for qualitative analysis were also employed here to code and categorize gathered data, including the use of RQDA, a software package for Qualitative Data Analysis that runs within the R statistical software program. Various patterns and behaviors relevant to intellectual property reforms as they relate to artist practices were discussed in detail following the analysis of findings, in an effort to describe how cultural norms of copyright intersect with the creation of original works of authorship, and towards the development of the theory that the semiotic sign systems subject to intellectual property laws are not themselves forms of real property, as they do not meet the categorical requirements of scarce resources.

Academic integrity policies coded specifically for journalism schools or departments are devised for the purpose of fostering a realistic, informative learning environment. Plagiarism and fabrication are two of the most egregious errors of judgment a journalist can commit, and journalism schools and departments address these errors through their academic integrity policies. Some schools take a zero-tolerance approach, often expelling the student after the first or second violation, while other schools take a tolerant approach, in which a student is permitted at least three violations before suspension is considered. In a time where plagiarizing and fabricating stories has never been easier to commit and never easier to catch, students must be prepared to understand plagiarism and fabrication with multimedia elements, such as video, audio, and photos. In this project, journalism academic integrity codes were gathered from across the U.S. and designated to a zero-tolerance, semi-tolerant or tolerant category the researcher designed in order to determine what is preparing students most for the real journalism world, and to suggest how some policies could improve themselves.

The 2015 Supreme Court case, Reed v. Town of Gilbert, is unusual. While it was unanimously decided in a 9-0 opinion, the majority opinion created a lot of divisiveness within the Court. This thesis examines how a court that unanimously decided on the outcome of the case contains concurring opinions that so strongly disagree with the specifics put forth in the Opinion of the Court, and what implications that might have on future content discrimination laws. Such implications include whether the Court will take a more functional or literal approach to strict scrutiny examination and content regulation.

The Freedom of Information Act (1966), an amendment altering Section Three of the Administrative Procedure Act (1964), outlines the rules and regulations for United States citizens to obtain federal government records. The act, written with the guidance of journalists, was created for all members of the public, but with the intent that the press would be the primary users of the legislation. The authors of the act believed the press would utilize FOIA to enhance its ability to accomplish its duty of keeping the public informed. Now, 51 years after the act was passed into law, critics say FOIA has not satisfactorily allowed the press or the public in general to inform and be informed. Issues with demand rates, unorganized systems and subjective interpretations of the act have combined to lock information from public access through an act that was intended to be the key to it. The data from annual federal agency FOIA reports to the attorney general from 2008 to 2015 have indicated that, in multiple metrics, FOIA has increasingly struggled to fulfill and often has failed to provide records to requesting parties. These trends have inspired a discussion among journalists and right-to-information advocates about how to best resolve the issues that have contributed to them. Proposed solutions range from adjustments to requesters' approaches to the act, amendments to the act and even abandoning the act entirely in favor of constructing a new law.