#24: the 1st Amendment includes the right to receive information
“It is a crucially important channel of political communication,” Justice Elena Kagan said, noting that in addition to President Donald Trump, all 50 governors and all 100 U.S. senators and all members of the U.S. House of Representatives have Twitter feeds. “It is embedded in our culture as ways to communicate and ways to exercise our constitutional rights.”
“Justice Anthony Kennedy drew an analogy between social media and the public square, where free speech rights are well-recognized. Social media, he said, are 'greater than the communication you could have ever had, even in the paradigm of a public square.'”
“Stanford Law School lecturer David Goldberg, who represented defendant Lester Packingham Jr., set the stage by asserting that 'the law does not operate in some sleepy First Amendment quarter. It operates and forbids speech on the very platforms on which Americans today are most likely to communicate, to organize for social change, and to petition their government.'”
For More:
- First Amendment Center
- Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, Pippa Norris
- “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,” Jürgen Habermas, 1973