Marketplace of Ideas

-
John Milton's Areopagitica written in 1644 is one of the most influential pieces of the right to freedom of speech and expression. The marketplace of ideas was intended to justify freedom of speech with the outcome leading to the truth. Rational citizens will believe ideas that are true and reject those that are false. Milton wrote, in Areopagitca: “Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions: for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.” The Supreme Court took what Milton said to mean the marketplace protects the discovery of absolute truth. The Supreme Court uses the marketplace if ideas theory to show that people are rational and should have the capability to know what is true and what is false. The issue with this is that the truth today is not how it was back when the marketplace of ideas was first introduced. Today we have social media, different internet platforms, and various news broadcasts that just reinforce our pre-existing beliefs. There is a lot of "fake news" and doctored pictures or videos that are not accurate but trick people into believing them. This causes us to believe things that are false and keeps us from learning what the truth actually is. Sites like Facebook now what kind of ads and websites you like so they use their algorithms to figure out what will grab your attention the most and place it on your news feed. People let you see what they WANT you to see, and most times they don't care about the truth behind their message, they just want you to be on their side.  The marketplace of ideas is used in hundreds of different court cases to encourage free speech and free expression. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Invention of Motion Pictures

-
Image
Motion pictures allow people to tell stories and express themselves through images and videos. The mid 19th century is really when photography was introduced to the world, especially during the Civil War to document the battlefields during that time. An English photographer by the name of  Eadweard Muybridge took a series of pictures showing a horse in full gallop on October 19, 1878. He was hired by Leland Standford, who was a well-known horse breeder because he wanted to prove that when a horse is in full gallop that the horse will lift all four hooves off the ground at once. In order for the public to view these pictures in a "video" like manner, they were given instructions to view them through a zoetrope. A zoetrope is an old fashion way of viewing moving images by displaying a sequence of pictures showing progressive motion. There is a light in the center of the device and you spin it which depicts the "moving" image on a wall or any flat surface. After watc
Read more

Whats Covered by the First Amendment and What Isn't

-
Image
The first amendment was passed in 1791. It states that US citizens have freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of religion. The first amendment also "protects the right to peaceful protest and to petition the government. It was passed when President George Washington was first put in office, during his first two years.  While the first amendment  provides a great deal of protection to us, there are a few exceptions in which we are not protected by the first amendment. Just a few of them include but are not limited to child pornography, obscenity, true threats, and fraud. When using your right to freedom of speech, press, and religion "applies only to restrictions imposed by the government".  Today, people utilize their rights given to them by the first amendment through social media, during protests, and face-to-face in person. Over the past many years, there have been several controversial scenarios dealing with the first amendment rights not being prac
Read more

Covid 19 & Social Media

-
Image
People are going crazy during the quarantine just sitting in their house looking at the same walls every day. The use of social media has increased dramatically since the start of the COVID-19 virus outbreak. Many people have been using different social media platforms to express how they feel about the virus, how the country or their state is handling it, how they feel about the President during this time and to talk about how bored they are. The downside to social media during the outbreak is that false information gets spread extremely quickly and a lot of people believe everything they read on the internet or what their friends post. We get information right at our fingertips in a matter of seconds which is nice to always know what's happening. However, people are more likely to panic when they are seeing people buy out the stores and post how scared they are. When the outbreak first happened, people were buying out all of the toilet paper and hand sanitizer in the stores which
Read more