International Relations Schools Must Teach Freedom of Information Courses
By Miki Tanikawa
It is not every day that academics invent a new discipline and offer it as a course. When and if the option presents itself, however, global speech phenomena should be first in line as an addition to curriculum.
Freedom of expression as a legal or policy discipline is an established part of the curricula in law schools, political science departments, and schools of media and journalism in many universities across the globe. A more international dimension complements this traditionally domestically oriented field. For example, media law professors such as Kyu Ho Youm at the University of Oregon and Frederick Schauer of the University of Virginia School of Law teach their students how laws in other countries may not shield media organizations from libel in the same way that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution does for American firms.
The approach and the perspective that are now called for to grasp the speech problems happening on a global scale are reaching an altogether different dimension. Thus, a nationally focused discipline will miss the point on the most urgent issues regarding freedom of expression and what to do about them. One solution is for schools of international relations and other schools in related fields to establish courses on “Global Freedom of Speech and Information.”
FREE SPEECH DISCIPLINE GOES GLOBAL
Since the Internet took off, there has been an information and communication technology revolution which included the invention of platforms for digital speech-making. When social media entered the scene in the 2000s, however, it vastly expanded the space for expressive activities globally. The potential for global communication and direct citizen participation in the global public sphere grew exponentially, as did the array of global problems that arose from this innovation. Namely, the spread of disinformation and malicious information by a host of ill-intentioned actors with the intent to harass, harm, confuse, and destroy social, cultural, national, and ethnic groups, is now perhaps recognized as one of the greatest challenges humanity is facing. The impending national elections scheduled around the world in 2024 with the prospect of major disruptions by fraud and information manipulations are reminders that disinformation and the mistrust it sows among voters are a threat to democracy on a global scale.
Many scholars in the fields of law, technology, and media worldwide are furiously researching and lecturing on topics related to challenges stemming from the new (and often deteriorating) information and speech environment in the digital, civil, commercial, and political spaces. Some of these issues emerging in the civil, political, and commercial arenas include expanding surveillance regimes, tracking and profiling users’ online behavior, and violating data privacy by governments or private actors; cyber-harassment, defamation, hate speech and other online nuisances; and anti-competitive practices by big internet players that hurt users’ interests.
In many jurisdictions, myriad legislative actions have been taken to protect against these practices. This includes, but is not limited to, the European Union’s Digital Service Act and Digital Market Act, the latest reinforcement in the EU’s legal toolkit to rein in such problems.
HEIGHTENED CONCERNS IN THE DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERE
Governmental capabilities to surveil, control, and manipulate information in both public and private spheres have increased in the digital era. Consequently, the power of other societal actors such as the news media has comparatively diminished. In the digital age, government regulation of speech-making online is perceived as a “triangle,” an interplay among the government regulators, the tech companies, and the users. The state controls speech and the dissemination of information by “co-opting” (in some instances, “coercing”) technology companies, which are considered the gatekeepers of information in the digitally networked sphere. The government and the tech firms then regulate online speech and content creation by citizens, the press, and other users, who form the lower side of the triangle and are technologically and regulatorily subjugated to the other two.
Using its newfound powers, governments have, for example, undercut journalists’ ability to conduct investigative reporting about the government and government wrongdoing, as outlined in UNESCO’s 2017 report. Safeguarding source confidentiality is increasingly difficult under growing government surveillance capabilities which permit officials to follow journalists’ digital trails and track down informants. Governments can also snoop on journalists’ activities by tapping into surveillance cameras deployed on the streets and buildings owned by private parties through co-optation, a case of the two top prongs working together to suppress the “lower” prong.
In the global political arena, scholars and international relations (IR) practitioners are concerned with how information is being employed to harm citizens and minority groups and specifically how it has been used to incite sectarian violence on a mass scale. These actions can result in heinous international crimes, such as genocide. The Massacre of Rohingyas instigated by Myanmar’s military and the systematic killings of the Amhara group in Ethiopia reported by the UN are just a sliver of the bigger and expanding sphere of humanitarian crises associated with informational harm.
These issues can be described as freedom “from” harmful information which is part and parcel of the free speech discipline. On the “freedom of” speech side of the issues, growing cyber libel laws and digital surveillance targeting journalists, scholars, and citizen bloggers have led to a rise in arbitrary arrests, detentions, and disappearances linked to alleged crimes, such as blasphemy, dissent and sedition. Technological advances have notably facilitated the detection of these offenses. Securing the safety of journalists remains one of the most repeated calls for action and is consistently listed as an agenda item by the United Nations and its agencies, such as the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.
THE SEEPING SCOPE OF THE NEW DISCIPLINE
In the realm of law and international order, the breadth of what constitutes global freedom of expression and information as an academic subject matter is bewildering. It involves, for instance, the consideration of international humanitarian law versus international human rights law, where applicability may differ depending on wartime or peacetime with regards to “manipulation of information.” Such acts of information manipulation are permissible under international humanitarian law in times of armed conflict.
This leniency granted by international humanitarian law warrants reconsideration in light of technological advancements that have enabled military actors to instrumentalize information as a method to hurt, destroy, and annihilate human beings in an unprecedented way. Military tacticians have always used information to kill throughout history. In her 2022 report, however, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression Irene Khan highlighted that “What is new and of serious concern is the ease, scale and speed with which false or misleading harmful information is being created, distributed and amplified by digital technology.”
This emerging discipline with many unanswered questions needs to be extensively examined, researched, and offered as a comprehensive study—from the point of view of freedom of expression and information—by someone with legal training, an interdisciplinary flair, and the capacity to use a broader IR lens. The suitability of the subject as an IR discipline becomes even clearer as we look at it from the perspective of global power dynamics. These inequities are reflected not only in the unequal access to technology and information among countries and regions but also in the imbalance of power between the governmental and technological entities versus their citizens and users. From a developmental standpoint, informational and infrastructural disparities and inequities are deficits that the world community must urgently address.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
In addition to the impact of information disparities on global power dynamics, digital freedom of speech and information is an emerging theme within international human rights law. It needs to be recognized that freedom of expression, increasingly exercised in the digital realm, is a fundamental human right. It thus includes the “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds,” as stated in Article 19 of the International Covenant On Civil and Political Rights (which famously has a counterpart in Article 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.) Freedom of expression and information thus includes the right to access diverse and verifiable sources of information for all citizens at all times. However, in reality, access can be severely limited due to government convenience or connivance, neglect, or incapability. Access to information, especially digital sources of information is critical for vulnerable populations such as immigrants, refugees, and evacuees who might be in precarious situations and highly dependent on reliable information for their human security.
Consequently, there is a growing consensus around the need for international human rights law to be the standard for social media content moderation which regulates the flow of information. An expanding community of legal experts and platform companies are subscribing to this standard as a means to address prevalent issues such as hate speech and misinformation.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS MEETS DIGITAL SPEECH ISSUES
These issues, which extend free speech concerns—such as hate speech, misinformation, or disinformation—from national to international spheres, present a challenge to scholars primarily versed in U.S. and EU laws. Such scholars may find it difficult to grapple with, for example, the human security-based imperative for access to information during wartime, a concept less explored within their usual frameworks.
Some governments may lack the technical capabilities to establish and oversee technology infrastructure, as well as the necessary expertise for content moderation. Deciding what content stays online and what content does not and patrolling privacy violations involve a well-refined governance structure. The structure must run in tandem with the internet platforms and regulators, as observed in the EU. The recent passage of Digital Service Act and Digital Market Act, which strengthens EU and member states’ oversight and regulatory capacity, is a testament to the EU’s sophistication in governance capability. These acts build on the EU’s earlier success in regulating and mandating digital platforms to follow the EU’s content moderation guidelines and maintaining the privacy of users of digital services. Such acts of governance and control require that the authorities have a parallel bureaucracy to oversee compliance and conduct monitoring. Not all governments can do this.
In a more dynamic sense, understanding the increasing role of information and freedom of speech in IR involves assessing a variety of international actors, and particularly civil society groups. Some groups, such as Article 19 and the Anti-Defamation League, have grown in prominence. So have several UN bodies and specialized organs, such as the Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. All of these groups are paramount in tackling global free speech problems. For example, in the case of Myanmar, local organizations warned Facebook about the impending humanitarian crisis and genocide before the massacre at a time when Facebook did not even have staff who understood the local language.
To teach this comprehensive discipline, however, one must also be endowed with a sense of optimism not uncommon among IR scholars and aspiring students in the field. Perhaps it is beneficial to take a step back and consider how the wealth of information creation and exchange has become possible for so many more people in the new information era. Yale University law Professor Jack Balkin has described a “widely noted and characteristic feature of the digital age is the democratization of the information production and therefore the democratization of the opportunities to speak and express oneself.”
Much is unknown about the future of digital information, and this ever-evolving discipline requires additional research and exploration–making the classroom with its inquisitive minds the best place to do so. Adopting a forward-looking perspective will serve as a catalyst to study, analyze, and find solutions to the knotty issues of digital freedom of speech while collaborating with the participants and students. The success of such a course, perhaps, depends crucially on this last element: the emergence of creative solutioning and thought leadership.
Miki Tanikawa (Ph.D.) is Associate Professor at Akita International University and heads the Global Communication Practices at the graduate school. A long-time journalist with The New York Times and The Economist Intelligence Unit, he teaches journalism and global communication and has published extensively in leading mass communication journals. He holds a master’s degree from The Fletcher School, a PhD in journalism from the University of Texas, and an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School.
Information is by Steve Davis and is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
