Reframing expressive freedom

The aim of this thesis is to reframe free speech. Thus, the research is a critique of what the author calls the “free speech libertarian framework”: a common ground shared across the political spectrum and in different disciplines that identifies expressive freedoms as the epitome of negative rights against state interference. Part I of the thesis historicizes the emergence of this framework in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Interwar advocates of free speech championed negative expressive rights, emphasizing freedom from government intervention to unleash the truth-seeking potential of rational debate. In doing this, they projected back in history their ideas, contributing to creating a cross-centuries “libertarian tradition” of free speech. A case study on John Rawls serves to show the pervasive influence, but also the practical limitations, of the free speech libertarian framework.Part II discusses neorepublicanism as an alternative to this libertarian framework. The idea of freedom as non-domination offers a promising path to integrate the political economy of communications in the reflection on expressive freedoms. However, this approach looks less promising when free speech is undermined by processes that are not easily imputable to the actions and intentions of specific agents (“structural domination”). Finally, the thesis proposes that non-dominated free speech and democratic decision-making require challenging the commodification of human attention in the public sphere.

Dissertation: https://hdl.handle.net/11370/e052e6cc-cdc8-4f75-8c1e-91374c858712