Freedom of speech in a partisan age : political tolerance, hate speech, and public opinion
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The United States, like other democratic societies, faces tension between allowing freedom of speech and upholding the dignity of its residents. Two aspects set it apart, however: the United States' First Amendment has provided broad protection for hateful and false speech, and Americans value freedom of expression more highly than people in any other country. In recent years, a growing awareness of the potential harms of extreme speech, particularly on the political left, seems to have tempered this uniquely American enthusiasm for free speech. In this dissertation, comprising three papers, I explore American public opinion on and the ramifications of freedom of speech in numerous settings using experimental methods and survey data. In the first paper, using a survey experiment about speakers on university campuses, I find that Democrats' tolerance of extreme right speakers is lower than that of Republicans, a reversal of prior literature that found Democrats and liberals were always more willing to uphold the speech rights of others. In the second paper, I examine survey data from the past two decades to answer how Americans' tolerance of certain groups has outpaced others, finding that tolerance has grown significantly, except for those groups that use hate speech. In the third paper, I study the impacts--intended and unintendedof banning hate speech on discourse of civic importance using a survey experiment. While I do not find a straightforward chilling effect from banning hate speech, such bans do seem to shift opinions significantly to the political left. Together, these papers contribute to the understanding of Americans' willingness to tolerate groups with whom they disagree, and how policies may or may not ameliorate societal divisions.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Boch, Anna |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Rosenfeld, Michael J, 1966- |
| Thesis advisor | Rosenfeld, Michael J, 1966- |
| Thesis advisor | Freese, Jeremy |
| Thesis advisor | Jiménez, Tomás R. (Tomás Roberto), 1975- |
| Degree committee member | Freese, Jeremy |
| Degree committee member | Jiménez, Tomás R. (Tomás Roberto), 1975- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Sociology |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Anna Boch |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Sociology |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021 |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/zr275dm4793 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Anna Boch
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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