06 February 2025
Ceci n’est pas un Ban?
On 19th January 2025, the ‘Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act’ became operative in the USA in respect of TikTok, routinely (but somehow deceptively) referred to as ‘TikTok ban’. I will not deal in detail here with the saga (which readers of this blog are already familiar with), but with the misalignment between legal form and political narrative: A vaguely formulated statute became a symbolical proxy for principled confrontation over the underlying values. Continue reading >>
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14 March 2022
Terrorist content online and threats to freedom of expression
Many states have used these general stipulations contained in international law to introduce in their counterterrorism legislation specific provisions criminalizing the dissemination of ideas or opinions that might incite, endorse, or stimulate the commission of terrorist acts. With social media platforms, a new set of actors have begun setting the thresholds of what speech they will host, complicating governance. Continue reading >>
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10 March 2022
Anti-terrorism regulation and the media in Uganda
Freedom of the media just like freedom of expression are provided for in the 1995 Constitution of Uganda, but spaces for exercising these rights are growing narrower by the day. The use of anti-terrorism regulation to suppress dissenting views reflects growing intolerance of criticism of President Yoweri Museveni’s regime. Foremost, legal and physical harassment from the authorities threaten privately funded media institutions and deter journalists from covering and interrogating certain issues. Continue reading >>07 February 2022
9/11 on Turkish Shores
The 9/11 attacks exposed the precariousness of the public sphere, however, they did not result in a dramatic shift in the Turkish public sphere. Rather, the coup attempt of 2016 turned out to be Turkey’s “9/11 moment.” Continue reading >>
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31 January 2022
The Impact of 9/11 on Freedom of Expression in the United States
In the United States the actual impact of 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror” on speech and press freedoms has been complex, and in many ways much less than expected. In fact, free speech rights vis-à-vis the government remain largely robust in the United States; the real conflicts and issues today concern the role of private Internet companies, notably social media, in restricting free speech. Continue reading >>
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