The Impacts of Online Expression on Freedom and Privacy

This report critically examines the impacts of online expression on the public sphere, focusing on freedom of speech and the right to privacy. It begins by outlining the increasing role of technology and social media in facilitating self-expression, and the importance of freedom of expression as a democratic right. The report then explores the positive and negative impacts of online expression, including the potential for misuse and the infringement of privacy. It discusses legal limitations on freedom of expression, the role of social media, and the importance of protecting personal information. The report incorporates theoretical sources and provides case studies, such as Chris Cairns v Lalit Modi and Melania Trump v Daily Mail, to illustrate the practical implications of online expression. The conclusion emphasizes the need for balance between freedom of expression and the protection of individual rights, highlighting the challenges of regulating online speech and safeguarding privacy in the digital age.

Running Head: Impacts of online expression. 0
Impacts of
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January 4
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Impacts of online expression. 1
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Impacts of Online Expression..........................................................................................................3
Theoritical Sources...........................................................................................................................7
Conclusion........................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

Impacts of online expression. 2
Introduction
The freedom of expression is one of the most important ingredients of the constitution of the
United Kingdom where the technology has played a huge role in expressing oneself on the
social platform in the form of social networking sites, YouTube and various other blogs. The
freedom of expression falls under the democratic rights of our country, a person has the right
to express themselves on any platform. The social media platform is one of the most
important and crucial platforms to express. The use of social media and the internet has
increased the diversification of powers and created a platform to communicate globally where
people have the right to express themselves by using such platforms. These modern platforms
are very easy in communicating in comparison to traditional media such as television,
newspapers etc. People all around the world have now understood the need and importance of
freedom of expression on social media. Social media has not only played an important role in
providing a platform for freedom of expression of the people but it has also helped in
providing an effective medium of communication between the people all around the globe.

Impacts of online expression. 3
Impacts of Online Expression
Freedom of expression: A freedom of expression is a principle which is generally adopted
by a community and country to explain its own views in front of everyone. Such a principle is
taken from article 19 on the Universal Declaration on human rights where any individual has
the right to convey its feelings, opinions and expression to any person or community.
However, the freedom of expression or the freedom of speech has certain exceptions which
differ from country to country all around the world. According to UNESCO, the freedom of
speech and expression must not only apply to social media but it should also be applied to
modern media such as blogs, social media and YouTube etc (Young, 2017). It can also be
noted that the traditional media is also using online media and social media platforms to
communicate and to spread its news all around the world. Such internet platforms are very
useful for such particular class of audiences who are not free to express themselves. For
example, LGBT people who are embarrassed to communicate openly with others can more
often communicate with people all around the globe through the use of social media
platforms. The social media has not only provided the ability to receive information all
around the world but it is also an effective platform to communicate with people all around
the world. It is also an affecting mode of uploading photos, videos and all other information
(Cram, 2016). Another important feature of social media platform that it is not a one-way
communication, it is a two-way communication where people have the right and authority to
respond upon the mode of communication done by the person. The article 19 of the Universal
Declaration on human rights advocates that there should be free flow and exchange of
communication all around the world regardless of borders. Such communication may be in
the form of right to express, speak and to broadcast messages all around the world. The
global communication has no boundaries and is considered the most instantaneous type of

Impacts of online expression. 4
communication without any boundaries to be considered (Venkatraman, Garg, and Kumar,
2015).
It can also be understood that the article 10 of Human Rights Act protects the right of freedom
of expression to each and every individual in the world. The article 10 says that people are
free to give their opinion or form an expression to each and every individual of the world.
The following are the rights covered under article 10 of the act:
1. Right to express views which are political in nature.
2. Right to express artistic views.
3. Right to express commercial views.
But the following situations are limited in nature subjected to article 10 of the Human Rights
Act:
1. The limitations which are covered under the law (Nacos, 2017).
2. For the purpose of protecting the health of the individual.
3. For preventing crime in society.
4. For the purpose of protecting the rights of the individual.
5. For the purpose of maintaining secrecy.
Negative impacts of freedom of expression on social media: One the basic advantage of
freedom of expression that the practice of ignorance which is used by a certain amount of
people. Free freedom of expression also leads to communal violence, criminal acts,
conspiracy and various other malicious activities which are not common in nature and such
activities are not adopted by the societies (Lavenex, 2017). Various countries like the USA
has made a free speech or the freedom of expression subject to the certain legal limit if such
limit is being crossed by the individual than the person may face legal charges. The basic

Impacts of online expression. 5
intentions of such legal limit are to prevent harassment of various activities that are
biasedness in the form of race, colour, disability and gender etc (Donnelly, and Whelan,
2017). Various people are using their freedom of expression in an extensive manner which
hurts the rights and sentiments of other people. Various people through the medium of social
media have been hurting the sentiments of people by using unethical words and racial
comments (Freeman, 2017). Apart from such incidents the freedom of speech and expression
are more often used by the terrorist groups and various other terror organisations in order to
hurt various caste of people. The negative words which are being spread on social media can
disturb a person negatively which may lead to serious negative effects which may prove
various very dangerous. Hence it is very important to keep an eye on the freedom of
expression which should make a difference between law and freedom of expression (Smith,
2016).
Right to privacy: In this new era people are frequently using online methods to store their
personal as well as a profession in an online platform. It can also be understood that the
people can send as well receive information by the way of the internet which enables them to
save information in an online platform. It becomes very easy for people to send, receive and
store information online by the effective usage of internet (Sen, 2017). However, there is a
risk of leakage of such data which may reveal personal and professional information to
others. The hackers of such information may misrepresent the facts and may cause violence
between two or more persons which may prove harmful. The private information of
individual are hacked when the email address or the URL of the source of information is
being revealed that there are more chances of the account being hackled by the hackers which
may change the facts and figures of the personal data and can reveal such information to
others which may prove harmful for the people. Apart from that, the social media has become
such a platform where the people can exchange their personal information with each other,

Impacts of online expression. 6
which can be easily hacked by the hackers which may result in the presentation of false facts
to the public at large (Abokhodair, and Vieweg, 2016).
However, it can be noted that the government of United Kingdom has made certain laws for
the protection of right to privacy and right to freedom of speech for the citizens living in the
country (McDonald, and Thompson, 2016). These laws are made in such a manner that the
speech or expression made by a certain person are being judged in the eye of law, the person
might be punishable by the court of law if the freedom of speech and expression extends the
legal limit set by law or which provokes or hurts the feelings and sentiments of other people
or a particular race of people. The laws are made in accordance with provocation or any
wrongful statement by another individual who may lead in physical and criminal violence
between the two parties (Crane, and Gardner, 2016).

Impacts of online expression. 7
Theoretical Sources
The right to freedom of speech and expression has some positive and negative impacts as
well. Such negative impacts have led to various lawsuits all around the world, some of the
lawsuits and defamation cases are explained below:
1. Chris Cairns v Lalit Modi [2012] EWHC 756 (QB)
In this case, Lalit Modi the previous chairman of Indian Premier League in the game of
cricket accused Chris Cairns of match-fixing on a social networking site that is Twitter. Such
freedom of speech on social networking sites has led to a defamation suit by Chris Cairn to
Lalit Modi on basis of the accusations done by him on twitter. The defamation suit has
resulted in the court-ordered Lalit Modi to pay GBP 4,00,000 in the form of legal fees
as the accusations made by Lalit Modi was baseless and without any facts and evidence. As a
result, Lalit Modi had to apologise to Chris Cairns over the use of such words on Twitter
(Schimmel, 2015).
2. Munim Abdul vs. Director of public prosecutions [2011] EWHC 247 (Admin)
In this case, a group of individuals ceased their freedom of speech and expression to a certain
limit calling and chanting the brave British soldiers as ‘baby killers and rapist'. The people
were also shouting and chanting ‘burn in hell' to the British soldiers. Such freedom of speech
and expression has resulted in a breach in article 10 of the European Convention on Human
Rights. The court convicted these individuals and these individuals seeking bail article 10 of
the above act. The court held that the freedom of speech and expression used by the bunch of
these individuals has been extended to the limit set in law hence such individuals need to be
punished as per the law (Rainey, 2017).

Impacts of online expression. 8
3. Melania Trump v Daily Mail (England)
In this case study, Daily Mail accused Melania Trump who is the first lady of the United
States of America that she has worked as an escort. Melania Trump on the basis of
accusations made by Daily Mail filed a defamation suit against Daily Mail the New York
state commercial court and in UK high court claiming damages of $150 million. On the result
of such suit filed by Melania Trump Daily Mail settled the case in $3 million and gave an
apology in the headings of their newspaper as the newspaper infringed her right to privacy
(Spicer, 2018).

Impacts of online expression. 9
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above report that the right to freedom of speech and expression
is limited in different countries all around the world. The usage of social media platform and
blogs has created a platform to express the freedom of expression and freedom of speech in
the public domain. However, the above report also focuses upon the negative impacts of
freedom of speech and expression on social media platform which has created violence
between the people. The report also portrays the right of privacy which is being infringed by
the usage of social media and how the leaked facts are misrepresented by the hackers of the
data. The report also shows a brief explanation regarding the misuse of social media platform
by the terrorist groups and terrorist organisations which helped them in creating chaos all
around the world. It also specifies a bunch of people ignoring the freedom of expression used
by other people are also proved a great limitation to the freedom of speech and expression.
The report also specifies various case laws which have breached the limit of freedom of
speech which has led to defamation suits against the particular class of people. Hence it can
be concluded from the above report that there should be freedom of speech and expression all
around the world to the certain extent of law which does not hurt any rights of certain persons
or it does not hurt the sentiments of a particular class of people.

Impacts of online expression. 10
References
Abokhodair, N. and Vieweg, S., (2016) Privacy & social media in the context of the Arab
Gulf. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (pp.
672-683). ACM.
Cram, I., (2016) Contested words: legal restrictions on freedom of speech in liberal
democracies. Routledge.
Crane, G.M. and Gardner, J.M., (2016) Pathology image-sharing on social media:
recommendations for protecting privacy while motivating education. AMA journal of
ethics, 18(8), p.817.
Donnelly, J. and Whelan, D.J., (2017) International human rights. Hachette UK.
Freeman, M., (2017) Human rights. John Wiley & Sons.
Lavenex, S., (2017) Revival: The Europeanisation of Refugee Policies (2001): Between
Human Rights and Internal Security. Routledge.
McDonald, P. and Thompson, P., (2016) Social media (in) and the reshaping of public/private
boundaries in employment relations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 18(1),
pp.69-84.
Nacos, B.L., (2017) Media, Terrorism and Freedom of Expression. In The Routledge
Companion to Media and Human Rights (pp. 496-505). Routledge.
Rainey, B., (2017) Human Rights Law Concentrate: Law Revision and Study Guide. Oxford
University Press.

Impacts of online expression. 11
Schimmel, G., (2015) Facebook and your child: the media. Without Prejudice, 15(11), pp.62-
63.
Sen, A., (2017) Elements of a theory of human rights. In Justice and the Capabilities
Approach (pp. 221-262). Routledge.
Smith, R.K., (2016) Textbook on international human rights. Oxford University Press.
Spicer, R.N., (2018) Conclusion: Two Paths in the Legal Woods. In Free Speech and False
Speech (pp. 111-125). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Venkatraman, A., Garg, N. and Kumar, N., (2015) Greater freedom of speech on Web 2.0
correlates with dominance of views linking vaccines to autism. Vaccine, 33(12), pp.1422-
1425.
Young, R., (2017) Personal autonomy: Beyond negative and positive liberty. Routledge.