JOUR 218 - Online Speech: Refuges, Harbors and Perils

Credits: 4
Planned Offering: Spring 2013 and alternate years

Prerequisite: JOUR 101 or sophomore standing. An examination of how the marketplace of ideas created on the World Wide Web impacts, impedes, and affects our communication and discernment abilities through looking at the laws that empower, encourage, and inhibit these abilities on the Web. The online experience includes clashes of interests, conflicts between content producers and content users, issues of privacy and defamation, and amplified roles and effects of anonymous speech in the society. Students examine how courts and lawmakers have dealt with these conflicts, the kinds of public policies engendered, and the effects on the First Amendment. Specific cases include controversies involving Google, YouTube, MySpace, Craigslist, etc. and legislative instruments such as the DMCA and the CDA. This seminar focuses on online speech as it affects defamation, privacy, anonymity, pornography, social networking, and citizen journalism. While technical knowledge is not required to take the class, students must be willing to actively participate in class projects. Abah.