Organizing free speech: Moderation and boundary-making in epistemically contested digital publics

• In Event: Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 9. Information & knowledge

Abstract

Digital publics are increasingly marked by epistemic contestation, polarization, and declining agreement over what constitutes valid knowledge. Although online participation remains normatively anchored in commitments to free speech, this principle no longer guarantees truth-seeking or shared understanding. Instead, free speech operates as a practical mechanism for sustaining participation amid deep disagreement. In environments lacking shared epistemic authority, decisions about acceptable speech cannot rest solely on truth claims, yet unrestricted openness risks destabilizing democracy. Governance in such contexts is shaped by algorithmic and AI-driven infrastructures that rank, recommend, and suppress content. However, automation does not resolve questions of legitimacy or meaning. Human moderators function as epistemic intermediaries who translate abstract commitments to openness into situated judgments about participation and boundaries. We investigate these dynamics through an in-depth study of the Reddit community r/conspiracy, a large, long-standing forum oriented toward “free thinking” and resistance to censorship. Rather than treating conspiracy communities solely as sites of falsehood and irrationality, we conceptualize them as arenas of epistemic boundary work in which institutional authority is contested. Drawing on a large corpus of moderator interventions across thousands of threads, we combine topic modeling with grounded theory to analyze how governance is justified and enacted. We identify three mechanisms: containing, which frames interventions as protecting openness without adjudicating truth; shaping, which structures communicative environments through rules and visibility; and deflecting, which redirects suspicion outward to preserve internal coherence. Free speech thus appears not as a fixed principle, but as an ongoing communicative accomplishment.

Authors

• Tim Risse, EBS University for Business and Law

• Elisabeth Busch, EBS University for Business and Law