Priya Dames

Priya Dames

Protect the Filter Bubbles: Emphasizing User Speech Rights in Algorithmically Curated Online Forums

Authors

Priya Dames

Mentor

Dr. Jasmine McNealy

College

College of Journalism and Communications

Abstract

In 2018, Knight v. Trump sparked discussion about the boundaries between government and citizen speech on social media. Some scholars argued that the courts erred in their decision and that the speech in question has been characterized as government speech. Others argued that the court decided correctly and that the use of forum analysis was necessary in order to ensure the health of our democracy as well as free speech rights for social media users. This article considers this debate within the context of algorithmic curation of social media feeds. This article argues that (1) social media platforms are not designated public forums due to the algorithmic curation of online user speech, (2) due to this, the public forum doctrine should not have been applied to the Knight v. Trump case, (3) despite this, user speech rights should be protected online. It also reviews proposed models of thinking that could address unresolved issues of the case.

Poster

Hover over the image below to zoom in or click to view full screen.

Research Pitch

View a 3-minute research pitch below.

To comment below, please sign in with Facebook or Google (using your ufl account) by clicking the little round icons to the right. If you decide, you can post as a guest by entering name and email below, but will lose some features. You can also subscribe to the student’s page to get email updates on new comments.

Leave a Reply