Stories of Senduro Flower: When the People Speak Up (2)

"A history teacher, at the end of his term, gave a final speech to his students, 'Remember, jokes and history are the same—both always repeat themselves."

"Government makes policy that reflects public preferences and there is a quite strong connection between public opinion and government policy," Senduro proceeded while examining the twin Dvarapala statues, the guardians of Manjushri Grha entrance, known as Sewu temple—although the complex consists of 249 temples, this Javanese name translates to 'a thousand temples,' which originated from local folklore Rara Jonggrang—was built by the end of the eighth century, at the end of Rakai Panangkaran's reign and was completed during the reign of his successor, Dharanindra, the Sailendra dynasty who was the Emperor of Mataram in Central Java and Srivijaya in South Sumatera.

"Political leaders need to know what sorts of policies and initiatives voters support, but other groups and individuals also need a working knowledge of public opinion. Interest group leaders must decide which battles to wage and how best to mobilize potential supporters. Journalists, who are key players in measuring and communicating public opinion, strive both to inform those of us who are curious about our fellow citizens’ attitudes and to understand what their audience wants. Corporate executives must pay attention to trends in the country's culture—what consumers think about, what they purchase, and generally, how they choose to live.

The tendency to represent public preferences has increased as politics has become a career path during the twentieth century, and that politicians have become (out of desire for reelection) more reliably interested in keeping voters happy Politicians have both a keen interest in representing the public and the seeming means to do so.

Representation is also at the heart of everyday political debate, say Stuart N. Soroka and Christopher Wlezien. Citizens care about what they get from government, whether it’s tax cuts or prescription drug benefits or education subsidies. They also care about the degree to which what government does matches their preferences for various other things, whether it’s the amount of healthcare, the availability of abortion, environmental protection, or going to war.

Not all politics is explicitly about policy, of course. Citizens also care about outcomes, and many argue that this is true now more than ever before. People want a growing economy, safe streets, and high-quality healthcare. Policy nevertheless is implicated, of course. Politicians do not have magic wands–they influence outcomes using policy. Politicians offer plans to solve important problems, such as a struggling economy. There are policies to reduce crime, improve education , fix healthcare , and so on, and when conditions improve, politicians don’t claim to have been lucky. They explicitly credit policy, for instance, when they declare that 'Our tax cut policy got the economy moving again,' or that 'We put more police on the streets and crime came down.' Policy clearly matters for both outcomes and politics. We want things, and, through policy, politicians try to deliver.

Public opinion is endlessly discussed in politics and culture. The president, members of Congress, candidates for public office, interest group leaders, journalists, and corporate executives, as well as ordinary citizens, routinely ask, 'What does the public think?'

How can all of us obtain information about public opinion? There are many sources. Perhaps the most obvious indicator of public opinion is the sample survey or opinion poll. Quantitative data from surveys can often give us a sense of how citizens feel about policy issues, social practices, or lifestyle issues. The results of elections and referenda sometimes reveal citizens’ preferences in very dramatic ways; it is often said that an election is the only poll that matters. Yet political enthusiast must go beyond these obvious techniques and consider all of the “places” that people’s opinions can be found: in the scripts of television programs; at political rallies, town meetings, or city council hearings; in the rhetoric of journalism; in the dialogue among friends who frequent a coffeehouse or neighborhood bar; in the political discussions one sees on the Internet and on social media or hears on talk radio.

Sherry Devereaux Ferguson mentions that as the first major philosopher to use the term l'opinion publique, Jean-Jacques Rousseau speaks of the importance of public opinion, its impact on rulers, and the necessity of being able to influence and control opinion. According to Mitch Horowitz, public opinion is the aggregate result of individual opinions—now uniform, now conflicting—of the men and women who make up society or any group of society. In modern debate, some claim that Lippmann's work, a bridge into the modern age, shifts the emphasis from philosophical treatises on public opinion to scientific studies of opinion. This statement is only partly true. The importance of public opinion is as old as democracy itself: the ancient Greek philosophers believed that democratic institutions, to be effective, had to be grounded in a solid analysis of popular sentiments. Authors such as Plato, Hobbes, Hamilton, and Madison express serious reservations about the potential of the average citizen to make a meaningful contribution to the workings of government.

Another group of philosophers adhere to the view that even though the mass public has little to contribute to government, their elected leaders can not afford to ignore their views. In other words, they view citizen engagement as a necessary evil. For example, in The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli writes that public opinion can either support individual ambition or, alternatively, the collective good. In The Prince, Machiavelli states that public opinion is fickle, driven by the fact that humans are 'ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are yours'. To remain in power, rulers must either manipulate or accommodate public opinion.

A third cluster of philosophers espouse the view that public opinion has a critical role to play in democratic societies. Aristotle recognizes the potential superiority of a collective intelligence, 'They may surpass—collectively and as a body, although not individually—the quality of the few best'. He is optimistic that public debate and discussion can be the vehicles for informed, intelligent decision making. John Locke argues that those in power have a duty to protect the rights of the governed. He says that the community ultimately is the 'supreme power,' and that the law of public opinion is equal in importance to civil and divine law.

In conclusion, the first school of philosophers (pessimists) views citizen engagement as undesirable and unnecessary. The second school of thought (pragmatists) views citizen involvement as undesirable but necessary. The third group of philosophers (optimists) views citizen engagement as both desirable and necessary. The fundamentals of the debate have not shifted, and many civic leaders believe that they face a no-win situation. They are damned if they 'do' and damned if they 'don't.' If leaders follow public opinion, critics say that they have no leadership qualities—that they follow public whims, which change on a daily basis. If leaders ignore public opinion, however, critics attach labels of elitism and arrogance. The most cynical say that governments monitor public opinion to learn how best to influence and manipulate that opinion. However, the problem that leaders face on the issue of how much priority to give to public opinion. According to the Populist perspective, public opinion research has an important role to play in democratic societies because it provides a means for the mass public to participate in and influence government.

Carroll J. Glynn [et al] mentions four broad reasons why so many scholars and public officials study and care about public opinion: the legitimacy and stability of governments depend on public support, if citizens withdraw their consent, the government has no legitimate powers; public opinion constrains (or should constrain) political leaders; public opinion provides clues about culture; while political leaders may be constrained by public opinion, they also try to influence it.

The word 'the public' grew from its contrasts to other kinds of social formations, most prominently crowds and masses. In the early twentieth century, the new science of 'crowd psychology' (a forerunner of social psychology) developed to explain how individuals could be caught up in mass behavior and transformed. A crowd is commonly defined by its 'unity of emotional experience.' According to contemporary opinion researcher Vincent Price, 'The crowd develops in response to shared emotions.'

Crowds are defined by their shared emotional experiences, but masses are defined by their interpersonal isolation. Sociologist Herbert Blumer, states that a mass is composed of anonymous individuals who engage in very little interaction or communication. A mass 'merely consists of an aggregation of individuals who are separate, detached, anonymous,' reacting in response to their own needs.

A public emerges and is sustained through discourse over a controversy. Entering a crowd requires only 'the ability to feel and empathize'—to share an emotion—whereas joining the public requires also, 'the ability to think and reason with others.' A public may be influenced by a shared emotional drive, but 'when the public ceases to be critical, it dissolves or is transformed into a crowd,' creates 'public sentiment' rather than public opinion. Unlike a mass, a public is self-aware and interactive.

Discussion of public opinion, says Maxwell McCombs, usually centres on the distribution of opinions: how many are for, how many are against, and how many are undecided.

Walter Lippmann long ago noted, ‘The world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out of sight, out of mind.’ In Walter Lippmann's day, the daily newspaper was the principal source of information about public affairs. Today we have a vastly expanded panoply of communication channels, but the central point is the same. For nearly all of the concerns on the public agenda, citizens deal with a second-hand reality, a reality that is structured by journalists' reports about these events and situations.

The daily news alerts us to the latest events and changes in the larger environment beyond our immediate experience. But the news media do considerably more than signal the existence of major events and issues. Through their day-by-day selection and display of the news, journalists focus our attention and influence our perceptions of what are the most important issues of the day. This role of the news media in identifying the key issues and topics of the day and their ability to influence the salience of these issues and topics on the public agenda has come to be called the agenda-setting role of the news media.

That is why the news media and many in their audiences, McCombs, are so fascinated with public opinion polls, especially during political campaigns. People have opinions on many things, but only a few topics really matter to them. The agenda-setting role of the news media is their influence on the salience of an issue, an influence on whether a significant number of people regard it as worthwhile to hold an opinion about that issue. While many issues compete for public attention, only a few are successful in doing so, and the news media exert significant influence on our perceptions of what are the most important issues of the day.

Now, the question is: Do internet channels of communication have agenda-setting effects among the public? In his study, McCombs mentions that a wide variety of internet channels demonstrate agenda-setting effects among the public similar to those found over the decades since newspapers and television. For example in America, in the 2000 US presidential election, the candidate websites influenced the salience of issues on the public agenda. The salience of racism as an issue increased among participants with high exposure to an experimental website. And candidate websites in a 2010 US Senate election influenced the salience of seven issues among Indianapolis voters.

Turning to online news media, the increased salience for an array of national issues among viewers of CNN online and for foreign affairs among participants in an experiment who viewed the New York Times online. In South Korea, two alternative online news services, OhmyNews and PRESSian influenced the salience among the public of the deaths of two schoolgirls by a US military vehicle, an issue that resulted in massive anti-US protests.

With the transformation of the communication landscape in recent decades–first cable television and subsequently satellite television among the traditional mass media and now the proliferation of websites and personalized social media–some observers have predicted the diminution, if not the disappearance, of agenda-setting effects in a certain scale.

Longstanding interest in the effects of the mass media has frequently been accompanied by a fascination with the relative power of the various communication media to achieve those effects. Agenda-setting has been no exception. Once people understand the basic idea of agenda-setting, they are quick to ask which medium is more powerful in setting the public agenda. In the latter half of the twentieth century, attention was directed particularly at comparisons between newspapers and television. Now the panoply of social media has been added.

For the most part, this agenda-setting influence is an inadvertent by- product of the media's necessity to focus on a few topics in the news each day. And a tight focus on a handful of issues by numerous media conveys a strong message to the audience about what are the most important topics of the moment. Agenda-setting directs our attention to the early formative stages of public opinion when issues emerge and first engage public attention, a situation that confronts journalists with a strong ethical responsibility to select carefully the issues on their agenda.

There are, of course, a number of other significant influences that shape individual attitudes and public opinion. How we feel about a particular issue may be rooted in our personal experience, the general culture or our exposure to the media. Trends in public opinion are shaped over time by new generations, external events and the communication media. Nonetheless, the general proposition supported by this accumulation of evidence about agenda-setting effects is that journalists do significantly influence their audience's picture of the world.

Regardless of agenda-setting, and ‘Fake news’ is nothing new, there something heppenned to the world since 2016, to borrow James Ball's term, the power of bullshit conquered the world: Post-Truth.

We will continue this discussion about Post-Truth in the next fragment. Bi 'idhnillah."

Then Senduro sang,

Is this a place that I call home?

To find what I've become

Walk along the path unknown

We live, we love, we lie *)

Citations & References:

- Carroll J. Glynn, Susan Herbst, Mark Lindeman, Garrett J. O’Keefe & Robert Y. Shapiro, Public Opinion, 2018, Routledge

- Stuart N. Soroka & Christopher Wlezien, Degrees of Democracy: Politics, Public Opinion, and Policy, 2010, Cambridge University Press

- Sherry Devereaux Ferguson, Researching the Public Opinion Environment: Theories and Methods, 2000, Sage Publications

- Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion, 2019, Gildan Media

- Maxwell McCombs, Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion, 2014, Polity Press

*) "Spectre" written by Alan Walker, Jesper Borgen, Gunnar Greve, Tommy La Verdi, Marcus Arnbekk, Lars Rosness & Anders Froeen

[Episode 3]

[Episode 1]

Bahasa

Stories of Senduro Flower: When the People Speak Up (1)

"A distraught investor called his financial advisor.

'Is my money really all gone?' he wailed.

'No, no,' the advisor answered calmly. 'It’s just with somebody else!''

"Democracy gives voice to 'the people', include 'all' the people and provides a basis for 'the people' thinking about the issues they decide, but these presumptions about democracy are often unstated," said Senduro Flower while looking at the painting La Liberté guidant le peuple by Eugène Delacroix—the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X—after greeting with Basmalah and Salaam. Senduro flower, Anaphalis javanica, or the Javanese edelweiss, known as bunga abadi (eternal flower) in Indonesian, senduro in Javanese, or tanalayu (never wilts) among the Tenggerese, popular among tourists and her dried flowers often sold as souvenirs. The plant has been protected under Indonesian law since 1990.

"People have the right to influence the political and social structures," Senduro went on. "When people speak up, they can shift power and find new pathways for achieving a more just and sustainable future. Deliberative and public consultation will usually lead to the best option being considered. To attain this, a knowledgeable citizenry whose access to information enables them to participate as fully as possible in the public life of their society and to criticize unfair government policies is needed. Democracy depends upon the widest possible access to unblocked ideas, data, and opinions. People must be allowed to express themselves, openly, publicly, and repeatedly; in writing and speech.

Freedom of speech—though is not absolute because it cannot be used to, for example, justify violence, slander, libel, subversion, or obscenity—is a fundamental right. A civil society allows for spirited debate among those in deep disagreement over some issues. Protests serve as a testing ground for any democracy, thus the right to peaceful assembly is essential and plays an integral part in facilitating the use of free speech.

According to Vincent Blasi, as ideals, free thought and free speech have roots in accounts by the historians Herodotus and Thucydides explaining the distinctiveness of fifth-century Athens, in the Socratic search for philosophic clarity and appreciation of the limits of understanding, in Euripides’ celebration of political participation and Aristotle’s recognition of the power of public opinion, in the efforts of Renaissance humanists such as Petrarch and Erasmus to liberate moral reasoning from scholastic formalism, in Machiavelli’s counsels of prudential rule, in notions of free conscience and inquisitive duty introduced by the Protestant Reformation, and in the scientific method’s systematization of open-ended knowledge seeking. However, for conceiving of the freedoms of speech and press as fundamental limiting principles of governance, the earliest argument that continues to be read today is John Milton’s Areopagitica of 1644. In that polemic, the great poet of Paradise Lost marshals a dizzying array of reasons and characterizations extolling bold individual inquiry and dynamic collective understanding.

Chapter two of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty—‘On the Liberty of Thought and Discussion’—is the best-known defense of free speech in the philosophical canon. Mill’s argument for freedom of discussion draws on his conception of human beings and their place in the world. Human beings are, Mill claims, wholly part of the natural order—as such, the human mind, as well as body, is entirely governed according to the laws uncovered by scientific investigation. This vision of the mind as operating according to natural laws leads to a view under which our only means of interaction with the world is causal interaction. Insofar as we are able to come to know the world, Mill claims, we can do so only by being receptive to the world causally. As such, the possibility of substantive a priori knowledge is precluded, for all receptivity to the world takes place via the senses.

Our engagement with the world, to put this another way, is sensible. We can perhaps imagine beings capable of knowing elements of the world by direct and unmediated insight. Such creatures would know how things are without being affected. But we are not them. We could know the world by acts of pure reflection only ‘if we could know a priori that we must have been created capable of conceiving whatever is capable of existing: that the universe of thought and that of reality, the Microcosm and the Macrocosm (as they once were called) must have been framed in complete correspondence’. ‘[A]n assumption more destitute of evidence could scarcely be made’, however. There is, for us, ‘no knowledge cognizable by the mind’s inward light’. As natural beings, our knowledge of how things are has at its foundation modes of interaction with the world which are themselves wholly natural.

Mill claims, that there should be no interference with the discussion of any opinion. Mill’s concern is not merely with interference by the state, but also by society at large. According to Mill, 'Society can and does execute its own mandates. [...] Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.'

Mill is clear that we are entitled to form opinions about others on the basis of their conduct and views, and to act on those opinions—this is not interference with their liberty, but merely a legitimate exercise of our own liberty, ‘Though doing no wrong to any one, a person may so act as to compel us to judge him, and feel to him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order. [...] We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours’. Indeed, we are entitled to attempt to persuade a person, that is, not to express certain views—‘remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him’—or simply to avoid someone if we see fit: ‘We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it [...] for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates.’

Mill examines the value of free thought and discussion under three different assumptions: (1) that the received opinions which are being challenged by the speech at issue are false; (2) that the received opinions are true; and (3) that ‘the conflicting doctrines, instead of one being true and the other false, share the truth between them; and the non-conforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the truth, of which the received doctrine embodies only a part’. He offers powerful reasons why unregulated thought and discussion is of great value under each of the three assumptions.

According to Frederick Schauer, what we now think of as freedom of speech can be identified as early as the sixth-century bc Athens, the English-language origins of the phrase ‘freedom of speech’ date to the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, and then became crystallized in the English Bill of Rights of 1689. In this bill of rights, however, the phrase ‘freedom of speech’ referred narrowly and specifically to the immunity of members of parliament from sanctions for what they said—spoke—on the floor of parliament and not to anything more comprehensive. Only thereafter did the phrase take on anything resembling its more modern meaning. This shift can be traced roughly to the early eighteenth century, and from then on the phrase appears to have departed from its original parliamentary-immunity moorings, with ‘freedom of speech’ becoming more commonly understood as referring to a right of citizens and not just to an immunity of members of parliament.

Importantly, this broader conception of the right of (some) citizens to speak freely (on some topics, in some places) without fear of some sanctions came into wide usage throughout the British Empire, and thus the phrase ‘freedom of speech’ found its way into common parlance, judicial decisions, political discourse, and the constitutions of some of the North American colonies, as with the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, which provided in its Article XII that ‘the people have a right to freedom of speech, and of writing, and publishing their sentiments; therefore the freedom of the press ought not to be restrained’. By the time we get to 1791, the phrase had become widely used, and it was this phrase that was enshrined into the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Importantly, this broader conception of the right of (some) citizens to speak freely (on some topics, in some places) without fear of some sanctions came into wide usage throughout the British Empire, and thus the phrase ‘freedom of speech’ found its way into common parlance, judicial decisions, political discourse, and the constitutions of some of the North American colonies, as with the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, which provided in its Article XII that ‘the people have a right to freedom of speech, and of writing, and publishing their sentiments; therefore the freedom of the press ought not to be restrained’. By the time we get to 1791, the phrase had become widely used, and it was this phrase that was enshrined into the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Why then protect freedom of speech? Some contend that freedom of speech is essential to self-government (government of a country by its own people, especially after having been a colony). The citizenry must have access to information in order to exercise the franchise intelligently and hold their elected representatives accountable. Others argue that freedom of speech must be defended because it is a central aspect of personal autonomy and self-realization. Some, particularly in the international community, defend freedom of speech as an essential aspect of individual dignity.

The oldest rationale offered in support of freedom of speech, however, is the ‘search for truth’ justification. According to this rationale, protecting freedom of speech creates a marketplace of ideas in which truth ultimately prevails over falsity. Speech therefore must not be restricted, because to do so would inhibit this search for truth.

Despite its long-standing pedigree, however, the truth justification has been under sustained attack from a number of directions, so much so that at least one commentator has described it as being ‘on the wane’. Further, and perhaps relatedly, the idea of truth itself also seems to have become a concept with less and less currency in an increasingly polarized world. That some would still consider the search for truth to be a primary justification for freedom of expression might be considered by others as hopelessly misguided and naïve. The truth justification, however, has its defenders. The concept of truth has long held sway over the human imagination, and the explanatory power of truth as a guide for human conduct continues to resonate.

Although the phrase ‘freedom of speech’ is now widespread, especially in countries with an English heritage, there has developed a concern that tying the freedom to the word ‘speech’ is too narrow. Even if we understand ‘speech’ to include the written (and printed) word as well as words that are spoken, perhaps contrary to eighteenth-century usage, it is still the case that limiting the freedom of speech to words or language, whether spoken or written or printed, remains seriously under-inclusive. Most liberal democracies, after all, now understand the right to include a wide range of symbolic and communicative but non-linguistic forms of public speaking and public protest, including marching, picketing, parading, sign-carrying, armband-wearing, flag-waving, flag-burning, effigy-burning, and much more of this non-linguistic character, none of which activities would be described as ‘speech’ in the ordinary English-language sense of that word.

In response to the potential narrowness of the word ‘speech’, the drafters of many modern constitutions and human rights documents have replaced it with ‘expression’—a word that appears capacious enough to include various forms of non-linguistic communication. And thus we see the ‘freedom of expression’ protected in article 5 of the German Basic Law, in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), in section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in many other legal instruments and human rights documents, and in most of the contemporary international and philosophical literature on the topic.

What is the essential connection between Freedom of Expression and Democracy? Ashutosh Bhagwat and James Weinstein refer to Freedom of Expression including free speech, freedom of the press, the right to petition the government, and freedom of political association. Contemporary democracies come in many varieties, each coloured by its particular culture and history. Despite these differences, a common denominator of all contemporary democracies is a practical, if not always formal, commitment to popular sovereignty—a state of affairs in which the people exercise ultimate control over their government. Another basic precept of every contemporary democracy is formal political equality of every citizen. A necessary component of each of these two basic democratic norms is freedom of political expression. Though largely overlapping, the expression inherent in these two basic democratic norms have some distinct features.

Political expression is a necessary component of popular sovereignty. It requires that ‘ultimate political power resides in the population at large, that the people as a body are sovereign, and that they, either directly or through their elected representatives in a significant sense actually control the operation of government’. The most obvious and direct way that the people exercise control over their government is through voting, either by electing representatives, or by directly voting on laws or policies through ballot measures such as referenda, initiatives, and recall. Because the right to vote is so crucial to popular control of government, a society entirely lacking the franchise is plainly not a democracy. The directness of this control, however, tends to obscure a less direct, yet equally essential, prerequisite of modern democracy: the right of the people to speak freely about collective decisions within the purview of the people’s ultimate sovereignty, that is, on matters of public concern.

The primary mechanism through which freedom of expression in a democracy controls government is public opinion. In a representative democracy, public opinion not only influences who is elected to govern, but also influences the decisions made by these representatives between elections. For while elections are ‘an intermittent mechanism’, public opinion is ‘constantly active’. When the people directly make laws or policy through ballot measures rather than indirectly through their representatives, public opinion will tend to have a correspondingly greater direct effect on the outcome.

The right of the people to speak freely on matters of public concern is, in turn, essential to the formation of the public opinion by which the people control the government. Why? It's because government propaganda and statements by government officials also affect public opinion. If the people cannot freely express their views on public matters, then public opinion will largely reflect the views of government officials and thus be an ineffective means of popular control of government.

Political expression is a necessary component of formal political equality. A basic precept of Enlightenment philosophy is that each person is of equal moral worth. There is a clear consensus among contemporary democracies that respect for the equal moral worth of each individual requires at least formal political equality. This commitment includes a formal (or procedural) right to equal participation in the political process. As Robert Dahl has explained, ‘The democratic process is generally believed to be justified on the ground that people are entitled to participate as political equals in making binding decisions, enforced by the state, on matters that have important consequences for their individual and collective interest’.

As with popular sovereignty, the most apparent manifestation of this commitment to political equality is voting. Formal political equality also includes the right of every person to contribute to public opinion by freely expressing their views on matters of public concern. For this reason, the expression protected by this right is vitally connected to the formation of public opinion and as such overlaps to a considerable extent with the freedom of expression derived from popular sovereignty.

In every contemporary democracy freedom of expression promotes two key democratic purposes reflecting the shared commitment to popular sovereignty and formal political equality: an informed citizenry and political legitimacy. The importance of the informing function of freedom of expression to contemporary democracy is underscored by Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which provides that freedom of expression shall include freedom ‘to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority’. This crucial democratic free speech function can usefully be divided into three categories: (1) expression that informs the electorate so that the people can ‘vote wise decisions’; (2) expression that informs speakers so that they can knowledgably participate in public discourse; and (3) expression that informs representatives of the views of the electorate.

The necessity of freedom of expression for an informed electorate is among the most often invoked justifications for freedom of expression, democratic or otherwise. It is the central theme.

Another core democratic function performed by freedom of expression is the promotion of political legitimacy. Although not as frequently emphasized, this function is arguably as important to democracy as is the informing function.

After we know a brief background about Freedom of Expression, in the following session we will discuss issues regarding it. Bi 'idznillah."

Before entering the next session, Senduro sang,

Life indeed can be fun

if you really want to

Sometimes living out your dreams

ain't as easy as it seems

You wanna fly around the world

in a beautiful balloon

Life, oh life *)

Citations & References:

- Adrienne Stone & Frederick Schauer (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Freedom of Speech, 2021, Oxford University Press

- David Bromwich & George Kateb (Eds.), On Liberty John Stuart Mill, 2003, Yale University Press

*) "Life" written by Des'ree Weekes & Prince Sampson

[Episode 2]

Bahasa