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Applying one of the country’s oldest rights to the ever-changing nature of speech, expression and community is a topic of discussion during Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Department of Mass Communications’ celebration of First Amendment Week, Monday-Friday, April 6-10.

The first of two live Facebook events, #AppreciateThe1st, was held Monday, April 6. The two speakers were Mass Communications faculty members Gary Hicks, PhD, professor, and Mark Poepsel, PhD, associate professor. Mass Communications graduate student Madison McKinley was the moderator. 

The weeklong campaign, which offers SIUE student organizations an opportunity to win as much as $300, was organized by SIUE’s Media Campaigns class, taught by Suman Mishra, PhD, associate professor and graduate program director in the College of Arts and Sciences’ (CAS) Department of Mass Communications. The campaign is supported by the 1 For All grant that Mishra received from the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University. 

Among the issues Hicks and Poepsel discussed, was social networking sites and speech censoring. 

“I think it is a problem that the courts don’t want to tackle,” said Hicks. “There was an interesting Supreme Court case in 2017, where the state of North Carolina wanted to ban all people who had been convicted of sex crimes from getting onto any social media platform. The court unanimously said it was unconstitutional, because in this day and age social platforms are the ways in which we communicate.” 

 “I used to think malls were public spaces, because that’s where everyone goes or used to go, but malls are private spaces,” remarked Poepsel. “I see social media like malls. If a social media platform exercises limitation on speech, it is not necessarily going against the First Amendment. Still, they should do a better job of policing. I wish they wouldn’t promote advertisements that are clearly misleading and not enable political campaigns to target people based on race, ethnicity, gender, income and more.” 

McKinley asked the professors: “Has social media become the new town square?” 

“Yes. It is a de-facto public square, because that is how people are using it,” replied Poepsel. 

“I think it is the new town square,” agreed Hicks. “Some of the lower courts have tried to say it’s equivalent to a designated public forum, which has a very high level of First Amendment protection. But it has failed, in that we see fewer voices in ownership, which allows fewer voices to be heard.” 

McKinley followed up with the question, “Are social networking sites doing enough to combat violent or false speech?” 

“No. They like to say they are not responsible for anything that is put in and taken out,” answered Hicks. “I find that it is a real failure on the part of the government to not understand how extremely powerful these social media platforms are. They should be able to say that social media must take some responsibility for their content.” 

“Social media can do three things better,” said Poepsel. “The first is to treat the employees whose jobs it is to get rid of illegal content better. Give them more breaks, better pay and hire more of them. Second, change the algorithms, so that they are not funneling people into nastier and nastier corners of conversations of the web. It’s a public square, and we do need to keep those public spaces clean. Finally, try to maintain the same policies globally. Do not be one Facebook in China and another one in the U.S.” 

The second facebook.com/MassCommSIUE/ live event will occur from 11 a.m.-Noon Wednesday, April 8, featuring international students’ perspectives on the First Amendment. 

Classes and organizations can attend and comment, by signing-in during the live sessions. SIUE student organizations with the most members present during both events will receive $300. The second-place winner will receive $200. 

For more information, contact Media Campaigns Class Manager Christina Carretta at csanche@siue.edu. 

Photo:
Featured on the Facebook live events, #AppreciateTheFirst, were SIUE Department of Mass Communications faculty Gary Hicks, PhD, professor, (left) and Mark Poepsel, PhD, associate professor.