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Overall, when generating an answer to the leading question with the given information, one can now identify that the First Amendment and by extension, the Constitution, is a very fluid and ever-changing phenomena in the world of human law. There are times when control is greater and times when control is lessened in regards to the people's freedom of speech and social media. In today's day and age, the Supreme Court Justices must work on integrating the concepts of the public forum doctrine in a digital realm that the founding fathers could have never even imagined. A balancing of past originalism and present applicability is vital in order to maintain Constitutional integrity. Despite the occasional seeming setbacks in the rulings to today's more absurd cases, the fact that our Justice system is still able to wrestle with the problems of today demonstrates a sort of beacon of hope in regards to the continuing possibility that our future can be free and democratic. The amount of control is constantly put into question regarding our new public forums and the very existence of such a question could be argued to be one of the vital things that keeps the United States a free country.

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Our Question: How much control does the government or First Amendment have over social media and the freedom of speech today?

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Our Question: How much control does the government or First Amendment have over social media and the freedom of speech today?

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This question is relevant to our society today because of the power and grip social media holds on all of us and its rising relevance to modern communication.

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“Are We Entering a New Era of Social Media Regulation?” Harvard Business Review, 13 Dec. 2021, https://hbr.org/2021/01/are-we-entering-a-new-era-of-social-media-regulation.

"Cohen v. Cowles Media Company." Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/1990/90-634. Accessed 5 May. 2023.

"Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization." Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/307us496. Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.

Kevin McGravey (2020) Digital Public Forums: Power and Representation in the Internet’s Public Squares, New Political Science, 42:3, 253-271, DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2020.1807274

"Packingham v. North Carolina." Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/2016/15-1194. Accessed 5 May. 2023.

“Snyder v. Phelps.” Oyez.com, https://www.oyez.org/cases/2010/09-751.

“Virginia v. Black.” Oyez.com, https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-1107.

Sarah Latest postsSarah S. Davis is the founder of Broke by Books, et al. “Fin the End.” Broke by Books, https://brokebybooks.com/5-reasons-not-to-do-the-goodreads-reading-challenge/the-end-book/.

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There is a growing divide on how much government control regulates social media and free expression since the dynamic connection between the First Amendment and social media is ever changing. The First Amendment forbids the government from enacting laws that restrict free speech, even on social media sites. Private businesses, like social media platforms, are exempt from the First Amendment's restrictions and are therefore able to establish their own terms of service and control speech on their platforms.

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Public Forum Doctrine: provides strong protections for freedom of speech and assembly 

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Public Forum Doctrine: provides strong protections for freedom of speech and assembly 

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https://images.app.goo.gl/J8eDEJwzxEkN9hZA7

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The public forum doctrine establishes an important foundation for the protected assembly of individuals to freely exchange ideas and opinions in spaces defined as public. The First Amendment's continuity and change over time from its inception to today's modern technological society must be contextually examined. The concept of the Public Forum Doctrine first came to play in the Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization (1939) case.

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https://images.app.goo.gl/4YQEr52KoD77rZrD7                      Donald Trump blocked Twitter and other social media platform users who disagreed with his views

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Question: To what extent can government officials use social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook to interact with their followers can be considered a public forum and how does this affect their ability to block or censor individuals?

Issue: Social media makes the 1st amendment less clear due to social media sites being privately owned
This case is similar to a previous Supreme Court case Packingham v North Carolina which is a case that also deals with the public forum doctrines' application when it comes to social media sites.

Laws: Deals with- Public forum doctrine

First Amendment state action doctrine (this ​​states that the restriction of speech by private individuals does not implicate the First Amendment except in some instances)

Conclusion: President Trump does not have the power to decide who can interact with his tweets based on the viewpoint of the Twitter followers or the content of their comments

The interactions had on Trump's Twitter account were not considered government speech and were put through analysis under the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence laws.

This is one of the more modern cases we've discussed and moves away from the legalities of public forums and written speech to the use of free speech on online social media platforms which is much more difficult to regulate. Our society as a whole will begin to experience more cases similar to this one as the popularity of social media continues increasing and we will see many more complexities in what can be considered free speech online.

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Assembly Rights ensure basic freedom under the First Amendment to hold the peaceful assembly of meetings, sit-ins, strikes, rallies, events, or protests, both offline and online.

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Assembly Rights ensure basic freedom under the First Amendment to hold the peaceful assembly of meetings, sit-ins, strikes, rallies, events, or protests, both offline and online.

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Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization (1939)

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Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization (1939)

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In 1939, the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) gathered in New Jersey for a recruitment event. The police shut down the meeting on the basis of a city ordinance that forbade public labor meetings. The CIO filed a suit against city officials for violating the First Amendment freedom of assembly. Justice Owen J. Roberts wrote the plurality opinion concluding that the police violated the CIO's First Amendment, applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Since they peacefully assembled on streets and parks, the ordinances were void. Justice Stone, Reed, and Hughes concurred. While Justice McReynolds and Butler dissented.

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'You can't block me: When social media spaces are public forums'

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'You can't block me: When social media spaces are public forums'

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In May 2018, in the case: Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University et al. v. Donald J. Trump, Hope Hicks, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Daniel Scavino. The case came into existence when former president, Donald Trump, began blocking people who were opposed to his viewpoints.

The court’s ruling was that Twitter was a designated public space as well as that public officials could not exclude people from otherwise-open online dialogues.

This case is a legal step towards making the internet a healthy public space, despite its heavily privatized nature.

A similar early case about unconventional spaces being deemed public forums is Marsh v. Alabama.

The ruling was that though privately owned, a company town could not restrict its citizens First amendment rights.

The article goes over a concept of deliberative democracy.

The term possesses reason-giving, accessibility, binding, and dynamic requirements in order to allow for truly democratic decisions.

Deliberative democracy is backed up by the notions that the average person is already contributing to mass politics, giving average people weight to their word is democratically fair, and that it encourages accountability on all socio-political levels.

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Concerns regarding the government's involvement in policing free speech and social media have grown in recent years. Some contend that the government must step in to ensure that social media platforms do not stifle free speech because they have grown to be too powerful and have too much influence over public discourse. Others contend that regulating social media would violate the right to free speech and set a bad precedent. "Digital Public Forums Power and Representation in the Internet's Public Squares" (2020) by Kevin McGravey asserts his stance on the role of governments in digital speech regulation.

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This case was one of the founding fathers of cases that involve the public forum doctrine and connects back to our original introductory statement which questions how much authority government officials have over someone's freedom of speech or freedom to gather peacefully.

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'Digital Public Forums Power and Representation in the Internet's Public Squares'

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'Digital Public Forums Power and Representation in the Internet's Public Squares'

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Members of Congress and the President on online platforms hold powerful positions in influencing public opinion

Interest groups and ordinary citizens can engage directly with them

Online public forums appeals to democratic values of civic engagement

Digital public forums have the potential to both promote democratic participation and exacerbate inequalities in representation and power

Forums often prioritize the voices and perspectives of dominant groups, such as white, male, and wealthy individuals, while marginalizing those of historically disadvantaged groups

Increasing access to digital technologies, promoting diversity and inclusion in online spaces, and holding digital platforms accountable for their impact on public discourse and democratic participation

The potential benefits of digital public forums can only be fully realized if these platforms are designed and managed in ways that promote equity, representation, and democratic participation for all.

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Differences between Social Media and Traditional Media:

Social media content is generally produced without editorial oversight.

Social media users have little choice about what kind of content they are exposed to.

Social media's strategies for making a profit differ from traditional media in regards to how companies rely on its users' data to make highly personalized advertisements.

This hyper-polarizing content can be incredibly dangerous in regards to phenomena such as the indirect, or even direct, incitement of violence.

At the time of this article, a step the government has taken in regards to regulating social media can be noted in the addressing of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. A possible modification of the referenced act is how social media companies could now be held liable for user-generated misinformation or hateful content.

The article also adds that now with the current Democratic presidential administration, it will be easier to pass more privacy-related laws as the party general has a majority agreement on what to do with those. For example, it mentions if the Honest Ads Act bill is reintroduced, it most likely will be voted into validity. It would have a focus on increasing transparency and accountability for online political advertisements.

The article wraps up its message with essentially the idea of how we are at crossroads of how the concept of the public forum doctrine will be applied to the digitized world. Companies either have the choice of aggressively working on moderating themselves or government intervention will become an inevitable regularity in that domain.

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The violence at the U.S. Capitol - and the ensuing actions taken by social media platforms - suggest that we may be at a turning point as far as how business leaders and government bodies approach social media regulation. But what exactly will this look like, and how will platforms balance supporting free speech with getting a handle on the rampant misinformation, conspiracy theories, and promotion of fringe, extremist content that contributed so significantly to last week's riots? The author argues that the key is to understand that there are fundamental structural differences between traditional media and social media, and to adapt approaches to regulation accordingly. The author goes on to suggest several areas of both self-regulation and legislative reform that we're likely to see in the coming months in response to both recent events and ongoing concerns with how social media companies operate.

After years of controversy over President Trump's use of social media to share misleading content and inflame his millions of followers, social media giants Facebook and Twitter finally took a clear stand last week, banning Trump from their platforms - Facebook indefinitely, and Twitter permanently. Could this indicate a turning point in how social media companies handle potentially harmful content shared on their platforms? And could it herald a new era of social media reforms, through both government policies and self-regulation?

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Are We Entering a New Era of Social Media Regulation?

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The violence at the U.S. Capitol - and the ensuing actions taken by social media platforms - suggest that we may be at a turning point as far as how business leaders and government bodies approach social media regulation.

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The Trump vs Twitter case is an important case for our topic because it involves the public forum doctrine but in a whole new light that helps us categorize what counts as free speech and what doesn't on an online platform.
-    Counterarguments for this case could say that social media is someone's personal page and even the officials should be able to do whatever they want or remove whoever they want on their account without consequences.
-    Case 2, Snyder v Phelps, essentially introduces a ruling on the opposite side of the First amendment spectrum.

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Question: Is there a line to what and where protestors can proclaim their message, even if emotional distress is incurred upon an external party?

Issues: Involved religious protestors at a marine’s funeral.

Their goal was a shock factor-relying protest against war.

Instead of doing it in an effective and non-offensive way, the protestors chose a funeral setting in order to use provocative terms and signs to call attention to their movement.

Law: The case was ruled that the speech was protected despite the cruel and heartless words.

This ruling strengthens the freedom of expression no matter whether it's repugnant or not.

Conclusion: Currently, absurd and crude speech is permitted if used in context of protesting. This permission extends even to improper settings such as directly outside a funeral setting.

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Case 2 deals with the idea that people possess the liberty to generate public forums wherever they want, given their context, such as a protest. This freedom however is complicated as it seems to have little regard for others in its immediate vicinity.
-   Counter arguments to this case could be how the vulgarities uttered at such a protest caused immediate and direct emotional distress to nearby funeral attendees and thus should have been relocated to a defined, given, and/or established public forum as their message would be arguably delivered just the same.
-  Despite this case being quite radical in nature, the ruling landed in favor of the offenders, however in the next case, if a 'protest' or 'movement' starts dabbling in the realm of physical demonstration, the rulings from SCOTUS are addressed differently...

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Question: Does forbidding cross burning with intent to intimidate violate First amendment freedoms of expression?

Issues: Involved a cross burning. The three people involved: Barry Black, Richard Elliot, Jonathan O’Mara, were convicted for having an intent to intimidate a person or a group.

Law: The burning cross was used as pure facie evidence (law evidence that is sufficient to establish a fact or to raise a presumption of the truth of a fact unless controverted) to demonstrate that they had malicious and intimidating intent.

Conclusion: This ruling weakens the power of freedom of expression with the concept that certain actions and demonstrations can be used as facie evidence in convicting someone with the intent to intimidate.

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The arguments presented in "You can't block me: When social media spaces are public forums", "Are We Entering a New Era of Social Media Regulation?", and "Digital Public Forums: Power and Representation in the Internet’s Public Squares" examine the divisive determination of how speech should and should not be regulated in online public forums like Twitter and Facebook. All articles confirm that the First Amendment's freedom of speech and assembly in online spaces is warranted. Like physical spaces, online spaces create nuances in determining the degree to which speech is protected in specific different online spaces. The main danger of freedom of speech in online public forums is the incitement of violence from everyday online users and powerful political figures. The tensions between moderation from private companies versus government regulation are tied to a broader debate of individualism and collectivism. In modern American democracy, these articles assert that the government does not have far-reaching authority of regulating the impact of an online user's free speech due to the nature of the Constitution's prioritization of an individual's rights. Ultimately, more regulation lies in the hands of private companies.

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Case 3 addresses this document's leading question in regards to how it shows that their are limits to what people can do in order to express their ideas or movements. Making use of physical and physically-affecting forms of expression has a much lower level of permissible tolerance by the SCOTUS and by extension the First Amendment.
-   Counter arguments to this case could stand with the idea that people should be allowed to express themselves even in the physical domain. As long as it doesn't cause immediate and direct trauma or physical danger to the nearest recipient party.
-    Moving on from the more blunt cases of expression of speech, the next case deals with the more subtle conflicts within what is and isn't allowed within the bounds of First Amendment rights.

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Question : Does the First Amendment ban one from being compensated under state promissory estoppel law for a newspaper company's breaking of a confidentiality agreement?

Issue : Mr. Cohen gave private court records involving another party’s candidate to reporters thinking it was confidential but the reporter used Cohen’s name in the article and he was fired, Cohen sued the newspaper for breach of contract.

Laws: First Amendment, Breach of Contract

State promissory estoppel law: prevents one from breaking a promise so the court rules that the First Amendment's free press guarantee

Conclusion: Mr. Cohen won some compensation but the Supreme Court changed the decision because Cohen's claim relied on the "promissory estoppel" law, which was broadly applicable and was not specifically aimed toward the press

This case deals with the First Amendment in written speech and tests the boundaries of newspaper companies and how much they are allowed to do. This case pertains today when discussing legal or ethical news journalism and what is considered illegal under the promissory estoppel law.

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By delving into the legal arguments and precedents set forth in the decision, we can gain a deeper understanding of how the public forum doctrine is evolving in response to the unique challenges posed by the digital age. For example, it can be argued that the Court's decision in Packingham has paved the way for greater protections for anonymous speech online, while others worry that it may have created a loophole that allows hate speech and other forms of harmful content to flourish unchecked.

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Packingham v. North Carolina (2017) involved the conviction of Packingham who was involved with “indecent liberties” with a minor. After his imprisonment release, there were no special stipulations. In 2010 he was arrested after authorities found his Facebook post showing gratitude for a dismissed parking ticket. He was charged with violating North Carolina’s laws regarding sex offenders—barred access to social media websites. The Supreme Court had to grapple with the following question: Does North Carolina’s law prohibiting registered sex offenders from accessing websites that minors have access to violate the First Amendment?

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The ruling states that yes, the North Carolina law barring registered sex offenders from accessing online public forums is a violation of their First Amendment rights.

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The ruling states that yes, the North Carolina law barring registered sex offenders from accessing online public forums is a violation of their First Amendment rights.

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Justice Anthony M. Kennedy delivered the 5-3 majority.

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While the government has a legitimate interest in protecting children from sexual predators, the court found that the North Carolina law was not narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. 

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While the government has a legitimate interest in protecting children from sexual predators, the court found that the North Carolina law was not narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. 

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The court emphasized that social media sites, in particular, have become an important platform for individuals to exercise their right to free speech and that denying access to these sites constituted a significant restriction on speech. The court also noted that less restrictive means, such as monitoring and supervision, could be employed to protect children from online sexual predators.

By delving into the legal arguments and precedents set forth in the decision, we can gain a deeper understanding of how the public forum doctrine is evolving in response to the unique challenges posed by the digital age. For example, some legal scholars have argued that the Court's decision in Packingham has paved the way for greater protections for anonymous speech online, while others worry that it may have created a loophole that allows hate speech and other forms of harmful content to flourish unchecked.

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Each case we analyzed had the common theme of free speech whether on social media or in public forums. In earlier cases such as Hague v. Committee, the first amendment’s freedom of assembly is tested when trying to decide whether a peaceful gathering but recruitment event was considered a legal public forum. On the other hand, in later cases such as Trump v. The First Amendment, we see the First Amendment’s public forum doctrine come into play when dealing with an online social media platform and what comments, posts, or accounts are considered to be a freedom of speech. We see this pattern again in Synder v. Phelps and Cohen v. Cowles media cases which both involve an incident with a written message and if it can be considered legal under the First Amendment. The idea of public forums and free speech have to do with any public outlets such as newspapers (Cohen v. Cowles media), posters (Synder v. Phelps), Twitter posts (Trump v. The First Amendment), and finally public gatherings (Hague v. Committee). Freedom of speech will always be tested and these cases are the foundations of how we will respond to other cases that challenge the first amendment in the future.