Jennifer L. Lambe

Who Wants to Censor Pornography and Hate Speech

Attitudes about censorship have been studied across a diverse range of disciplines, including mass communication, political science, social psychology, education, and library science. Despite varied origins, this research has two things in common: (a) seeking to understand how and where the public draws lines in limiting free expression, and (b) a normative desire to be able to predict and modify such opinions when needed. To influence public attitudes about hate speech and pornography (in either direction), one must understand the characteristics of people who do and do not wish to censor such expression. This article examines the relationship of attitudes about pornography and hate speech to a variety of demographic, psychological, and sociopolitical variables (including age, gender, education, political affiliation, religiosity, media use, need for cognition, authoritarianism, neuroticism, openness, extroversion, and commitment to democratic principles). The similarities and differences of the relationships with the two expressive contexts are explored.

Dimensions of Censorship: Reconceptualizing Public Willingness to Censor

First Amendment scholars and advocates have often criticized the American publics inconsistent dedication to free expression. Many studies have attempted to identify variables that predict pro-censorship attitudes, but such relationships remain largely enigmatic. The confusion is due, in part, to the myriad ways in which censorship attitudes have been conceptually and operationally defined. Informed by First Amendment theory and case law, a conceptual and operational approach to measuring these attitudes is proposed and tested. The results show it is important to conceptualize censorship attitudes as multifaceted.

Interactivity between Candidates and Citizens on a Social Networking Site: Effects on Perceptions and Vote Intentions

Voters and political candidates increasingly use social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook. This study uses data from an online posttest-only experiment ( N = 183) in analyzing how exposure to supportive or challenging user comments on a fictional candidates Facebook page influenced participants’ perceptions of and willingness to vote for the candidate, as well as whether candidate replies to each type of user comments affected these outcomes. Participants who viewed a page with supportive comments and “likes” reported more favorable perceptions of and greater support for the candidate, relative to participants who viewed a page with challenging comments. Thus, the appearance of interactivity between a candidate and other users on the candidates Facebook page can shape the responses of those viewing the page. However, exposure to candidate replies to either supportive or challenging comments did not lead to significantly more favorable perceptions or a greater likelihood of voting for the candidate.

Public perceptions of media performance at the beginning of the war on terrorism

This study examines the interplay among audience evaluations of media performance, their expectations about the roles media should fulfill, and restrictive attitudes towards media content at the beginning of military action in Afghanistan. The data are from a national random‐digit dial survey. Audience evaluations of media were positive, and media role expectations predict these evaluations. Both media role expectations and audience evaluations are significant predictors of endorsement of restrictive attitudes.

The Structure of Censorship Attitudes

Research about censorship attitudes across disciplines shares the normative goal of predicting and modifying attitudes perceived as either too permissive or too restrictive. Understanding attitude structure is important to achieving this goal. This study explores the intra-attitudinal structure of public censorship attitudes, specifically the general tendency to endorse particular government actions. For twenty-one scenarios, respondents indicated their agreement with each of five possible government reactions: prior restraint; subsequent punishment; time, place, manner restrictions; allow, and protect. Scale scores were computed for each government response. There are strong correlations between the two punitive restriction options and between the two permissive government responses. The time, place, manner response option related moderately to the other scales. Additional structural information is provided by examining scale relationships with other variables: gender, liberal-conservative self-rank, religiosity, need for cognition, authoritarianism, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion.

Newspaper Theft, Self-Preservation and the Dimensions of Censorship

One of the most common yet understudied means of suppressing free expression on college and university campuses is the theft of freely distributed student publications, particularly newspapers. This study examines news accounts of nearly 300 newspaper theft incidents at colleges and universities between 1995 and 2008 in order to identify the manifestations and consequences of this peculiar form of censorship, and to augment existing research on censorship and tolerance by looking, not at what people say about free expression, but at what they do when they have the power of censorship in their hands. Among the key findings is that men commit nearly 70% of newspaper thefts, which is inconsistent with much of the existing research on censorship and gender, and that those who censor college newspapers are far more concerned with their own self-preservation than with shaping public dialog on controversial social or political issues.