Mis/Disinformation
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Press Statement
Knight Institute Asks Court to Rule Quickly on Researchers’ Challenge to Texas TikTok Ban
Declaration from leading security expert asserts that ban is misguided and counterproductive
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Essays and Scholarship
Lies and the Law: An Introduction
Exploring how the law regulates or should regulate false and misleading speech
By Genevieve Lakier -
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Essays and Scholarship
The Professional Price of Falsehoods
What role should professional organizations play in responding to lies and misinformation spread by those within their ranks?
By Quinta Jurecic -
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Essays and Scholarship
Investigative Deception Across Social Contexts
Why intentional lies used to conduct undercover investigations are celebrated in some contexts and criminalized in others
By Alan K. Chen -
Essays and Scholarship
Protecting Public Knowledge Producers
Exploring the nature and value of government knowledge producers in our constitutional order and the legal, cultural, and political threats that they face
By Heidi Kitrosser -
Essays and Scholarship
Government Counterspeech
What leeway the government should enjoy to engage in counterspeech to combat misinformation or promote truthful discourse
By Jamal Greene -
Essays and Scholarship
What’s the Harm?
An interrogation of the societal impact of conspiracy theories and potential remedies
By Adam M. Enders & Joseph Uscinski -
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Essays and Scholarship
Fake News, Lies, and Other Familiar Problems
A guide to thinking about the best way to navigate the contemporary crises of the American public sphere
By Sam Lebovic -
Essays and Scholarship
Presuming Trustworthiness
How the Supreme Court has abandoned once-positive assumptions about press speech, even while embracing the trustworthiness of other speakers, and what it might mean for democracy
By RonNell Andersen Jones & Sonja R. West -
Essays and Scholarship
Weaponized from the Beginning
A century-old specter of propaganda and lies distorting the public sphere is raised as intermediary institutions that manage unregulated speech are undermined
By John Fabian Witt -
Deep Dive
Past as Prologue: Lies in Historical Context
Institute publishes second set of essays from “Lies, Free Speech, and the Law” symposium
By Katy Glenn Bass -
Essays and Scholarship
Distrust, Negative First Amendment Theory, and the Regulation of Lies
Why the reflexive deployment of negative theory, which increasingly dominates the contemporary Supreme Court’s approach to Free Speech Clause problems, has its costs
By Helen Norton -
Essays and Scholarship
Epistemic Disagreement, Institutional Analysis, and the First Amendment Status of Lies
When calls for regulating lies collide with free expression values
By Mark Tushnet -
Essays and Scholarship
When Are Lies Constitutionally Protected?
A framework for drawing lines on lies
By Eugene Volokh -
Essays and Scholarship
Democracy Harms and the First Amendment
How to regulate lies that cause constitutionally “cognizable” harms to the structural interests of constitutional democracy
By Deborah Pearlstein -
Deep Dive
Knight Institute Publishes First Essays from “Lies, Free Speech, and the Law” Symposium
Authors look at legal status of different categories of false speech in public discourse
By Katy Glenn Bass -
Deep Dive
Symposium Suggests Large-Scale Societal Changes Are Needed to Lessen Impact of Harmful Lies
By A. Adam GlennInstitute’s “Lies, Free Speech, and the Law” event featured research from a diverse range of scholars on how to address the problem of falsehoods
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Deep Dive
Are We Climbing in or out of the Hole?
Artist Piotr Szyhalski on the making of the “Lies and the Law” series
By Kushal Dev -
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Event
Lies, Free Speech, and the Law
A symposium exploring how the law regulates or should regulate false and misleading speech
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Event
Lies and Counterspeech
To what extent can speech—disclosures, warning labels, fact checks, apologies, and/or counterspeech generally—defang the lie?
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Deep Dive
Freedom From the Marketplace of Speech
Four ways to render speech less susceptible to private coercion
By Amy Kapczynski -
Deep Dive
Of Noisy Songs and Mighty Rivers
Why the framework of “marketplace of ideas” is a fairy tale
By Yochai Benkler -
Deep Dive
“Truth Drives Out Lies” and Other Misinformation
Justice Kennedy, free speech fabulist
By David Pozen -
Institute Update
Knight Institute Symposium on “Lies, Free Speech, and the Law” to Feature Scholars in Law, Social Science, History, and Technology
Public event to be held April 8, 2022, at Columbia University, and online
By Katy Glenn Bass -
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Deep Dive
Thoughts on Government Lies
Mapping the varieties of lies governments tell, with some help from Hannah Arendt
By David Luban -
Deep Dive
The Most Troubling Government Lie? The "Presumptive" One
The problem is less the obviously false statement than the obscure “fact” that allows the government to bias or distort critical information
By Wendy Wagner -
Deep Dive
What the Constitution Can—and Can’t—Do About the Government’s Lies
Litigation is one remedy; laws that constrain the speech of governmental bodies are another; counterspeech and politics are still more
By Helen Norton -
Quick Take
On Panel, Institute Attorney Warns of Legal Obstacles to Public-Interest Research on Internet Platforms
Krishnan points to Knight Institute's “safe harbor” proposal and just-released policy paper
By A. Adam Glenn -
Event
Pursuing Platform Transparency in 2022: A January 19 Virtual Panel
Panelists will discuss a three-pronged approach to platform transparency
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Quick Take
"Information Disorder" Report Calls for Social Media Transparency
Aspen Institute commission calls on Congress to protect researchers who study social media
By A. Adam Glenn -
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Deep Dive
The Media will be All Right
A plaintiff’s lawyer’s lament on how anti-SLAPP will be an obstacle for defendants with or without Sullivan
By Carrie Goldberg -
Deep Dive
Sullivan is Not the Problem
It’s the amplification of misinformation that’s the issue; the solution is about the architecture of our public square
By Nabiha Syed -
Review
Liars in High Places: Who's to blame for misinformation?
Jameel Jaffer reviews Cass Sunstein's Liars: Falsehood's and Free Speech in an Age of Deception
By Jameel Jaffer -
Deep Dive
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Facebook?
Start with Congress enabling more research and journalism focused on social media platforms
By Ramya Krishnan & Alex Abdo -
Event
Lies and Elections
How exceptional should we consider the electoral context when it comes to the regulation of lies?
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Deep Dive
Drawing the Line Between False Election Speech and False Campaign Speech
Why Congress or states may constitutionally ban the former but not the latter
By Richard L. Hasen -
Deep Dive
Congress Must Act To Establish Sensible Rules on Electoral Speech
Confusion reigns around current laws and regulations in the runup to the 2022 midterm elections
By Matt Perault -
Deep Dive
Race, the Epistemic Crisis of Democracy, and the First Amendment
Countering the “Big Lie” requires a broader conversation that includes acknowledgement of coded racial voter suppression
By Atiba Ellis -
Deep Dive
We Must Fight Lies, Ignorance, and the Bigotry They Produce If We Are To Remain a Democracy
Defeating the use of disinformation means pressing our government for laws that protect democracy and promote the truth, while we practice the same in our public and private lives
By Janell Byrd-Chichester -
Deep Dive
The Anguish of the Necessary Lie
Quinta Jurecic on the strained relationship between truth and politics
By Quinta Jurecic -
Deep Dive
Is Politics Possible in the Absence of Truth?
Masha Gessen on how polarization around facts pits us against each other
By Masha Gessen -
Deep Dive
Is Lying Actually a Good Thing in Politics?
Sophia Rosenfeld explores the value of some looseness in the policing of the boundaries around truth and lies
By Sophia Rosenfeld