How Media Decrease Tolerance for Free Expression

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Communication

Abstract

Free expression in the US has traditionally been divided into freedom of speech (which protects individuals’ expression rights) and freedom of the press (which protects media organizations’ and media owners’ expression rights). For most of American history, everyday Americans could express themselves via speech but expression via press/media was out of reach and not a guaranteed right. Physical printing presses required to print newspapers and equipment required to broadcast radio and television were unavailable to average Americans, making speech the only medium through which most people could express themselves.

Today, social media have blurred the distinction between face-to-face communication and communication via the mass media. While social media are fundamentally media that are owned and operated by private entities, the constraints preventing everyday Americans from expressing themselves through media outlets such as newspapers, television, and radio are notably absent on social media. As long as a person has access to the internet, they can express themselves via social media—social media platforms allow people to broadcast their opinions much more widely than ever possible before, and to a much wider audience, including many people they do not know.

Given its breadth of coverage and lack of barriers to access, social media platforms help to create a more open marketplace of ideas: more people can contribute their ideas to public discussions of issues, a wider range of views are able to be debated by the public, and elite media gatekeepers have far less control over the ideas that are expressed and debated. At the same time, the public seems to be questioning the value of freedom of expression (Free Speech Under Attack: Book Bans and Academic Censorship 2022; The Editorial Board 2022). This study posits that these two trends are related. By opening up expression via media to everyday citizens, social media has changed what Americans think about freedom of expression. In particular, I argue that Americans’ opinions about freedom of expression are contingent upon the medium through which expression occurs.

To test this theory, I adapted measures first used by Sullivan et al (1982) to measure tolerance for an individual’s least-liked social group. To create a measure of tolerance for expression, I took the subset of items dealing with tolerance for expression from Sullivan et al.’s tolerance index and created additional items to fill out a scale designed to measure tolerance for expression. The Sullivan et al. items assume face-to-face expression, however, so this index also adapts the items to allow researchers to specify the medium through which expression occurs.

Using this novel index assessing tolerance for expression, I ran a survey experiment (N=1000) that measured respondents’ tolerance for expression occurring on social media and through face-to-face expression. The order in which questions about these modes of expression were presented to respondents was controlled by a two-level, between-subjects factor. A within-subjects comparison of tolerance for expression via social media versus face-to-face shows that people are less tolerant of expression occurring via social media than they are of expression occurring face-to-face. Further, there is a spillover effect, such that people asked about social media first demonstrate lower tolerance for expression via face-to-face than people asked about face-to-face first. These findings suggest that not only are people less tolerant of expression on social media, but that social media also makes people less tolerant of expression occurring through other modes of expression.

Author

• Tyler Leigh, University of Pennsylvania