Fair Opportunity for Speech

What principles should regulate individuals’ speech in the digital public sphere? If the right to free speech is conceptualised as a negative right the answer is that individuals should not be interfered with in their speech. But that view seems overly narrow. A number of scholars interested in the political speech have hinted at, or even argued explicitly (Brown 2023; Lazar 2023) that because political speech seeks to influence government and our fellow citizens, there should, for democratic reasons, be equal opportunities to engage in it. In this paper I offer a partial endorsement and partial critique of this view. My critique stems from our reasons for valuing speech (where it is digital, old media or face to face) in the first place. On my view, others’ uptake of our speech secures the vital good of recognition. More specifically, when we speak we raise a claim for vindication of our status as participants in a discursive practice, while at the same time affirming that status in our interlocutor. The need for discursive recognition does not imply that we need uptake every time we speak, but if failures of recognition are pervasive and systematic that represents a particular kind of injustice. This relational picture of free speech’s value implies that all speakers, including those engaging in the digital public sphere should enjoy reasonable opportunities for speech. Where speech is non-political, I argue, it is sufficient that individuals have adequate opportunities that their speech reach others. In practice, even though it is up to recipients of others’ speech, whether or not to respond (by replying, retweeting, liking etc on social media), fair opportunities to engage with others should suffice for adequate recognition of one’s speech. Failures of engagement invariably mean there are systematic reasons for lack of uptake such as lack of resources, lack of digital know-how or discrimination (including by algorithm) which there are reasons of justice to address. Political speech has special importance because, aside from the wider influence it has on the public conversation, it concerns the rules and norms which regulate all other speech. Hence, I maintain, in the political domain (widely construed) the relational view supports a stronger principle of not just fair but equal opportunity for speech. Both the fair and the equal opportunity for speech principles have implications for the design and implementation of algorithms underlying what speech is amplified on social media. As the argument makes clear, though privately owned, social media corporations enable the public sphere, and hence, contra the non-interference view, principles regulating opportunities for speech properly apply to them.