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On 27 and 28 October 1994, the citizens of Mozambique will choose their President and parliamentary representatives through universal suffrage in multi-party elections. This report examines the respect for freedom of expression by all parties in the election campaign and the way in which the publicly-funded mass media, especially Radio Mocambique (RM) have discharged their obligations to provide fair and impartial coverage of the elections. (DÜI-Hff)

This essay examines contemporary liberal theory in light of the 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The objective is both to show the limits of liberal theory, in particular with regard to constituents who do not share liberalism's view of acceptable harm, and to discuss how these limits give us reason to supplement liberal theory with other recourses from critical theory and phenomenology. The essay warns against a bifurcation of law and harm, and instead argues for a pluralization of the possible links between them. To this end, the essay foregrounds what T.M. Scanlon dubs a certain 'creative instability', which works to energize liberalism's practice of free speech. The essay tracks this possibility in relation to the plurality and energy intrinsic to the 12 Jyllands-Posten cartoons, and suggests that liberal theory can learn from thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze who focus on the variable impacts and framings of free speech. The upshot is a self-critical theory of free expression, one that links harmful speech to the affirmation of mutual contestation, social equality and respect for difference. Adapted from the source document.

The international governance of freedom of speech involves a few moving parts: The UN Guiding Principles on Corporate Responsibility (UNGPs), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), governments who legislate on restricting speech, and companies who are tasked with reconciling the conflicting directions of the three sources. The UNGPs direct companies to adhere to international human rights standards governing freedom of speech, and the ICCPR provides that international human rights standard. Though the ICCPR is directed to ratifying governments who implement laws to restrict speech rather than companies, as stated by many scholars, the ICCPR is most prominent standard and is the international human rights standard that companies should abide by per the UNGPS direction. Additionally, it is this standard companies should have in mind when a government enacts a misinformation law that heavily restricts freedom of expression. However, the UNGPs are not a legally binding framework and the U.S. government has only encouraged, not mandated, their implementation. The lack of influential enforcement is one of the framework's major pitfalls, which may call for change. This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on April 25, 2022. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.

This introduction to the thematic issue Freedom of Expression, Democratic Discourse and the Social Media discusses the state of the debate surrounding freedom of expression in the field of communication studies and presents four original articles dealing with freedom of speech in contemporary media from different perspectives.

This report demonstrates the scale of state censorship imposed on the media and journalists under the law and in practice in Tunisia. It analyses structure and regulation of the media (print media, foreign media, state radio and televison, satellite television, Internet), criminalization of freedom of expression, harassment and informal controls. (DÜI-Hns)