Class Assignment!

What, exactly, do we mean by a "marketplace of ideas"?

As the media continues its election post-mortem, it seems fitting that I will be starting the penultimate module of my syllabus for my Substack course, Social Media and the Media Ecosystem. (If you are new to the Freedom Academy, it’s never too late to jump in!) The next few weeks will be very critical in understanding how the so-called “attention economy” has hijacked our shared reality and allowed so many people with extreme and uninformed ideas to have an outsized impact on people’s perceptions. On this point, you won’t want to miss my talk with Renee DiResta, author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality on November 21: I am reading the book now and yelling, “Yes! YES!! THANK YOU!!!” out loud to myself. Seriously, if you want to really understand what happened in this election, it’s a must-read (hint: it wasn’t the price of eggs, it’s what people believed about the price of eggs).

For now, and in preparation for that discussion, I think it’s worth thinking through some concepts that are foundational to our understanding of free speech. One of them is the so-called “marketplace of ideas,” often used in conjunction with the idea of the “public town square” and “speaker’s corner.” We use these paradigms to think about whether and how we should regulate speech — they drive much of our First Amendment jurisprudence, in fact. But do they make sense in the context of social media?

As a part of reflecting on that question, watch the short video below, taken from an anti-fascism film promulgated by the War Department in 1947 called, “Don’t Be a Sucker.” This was back when we fought the fascists instead of electing them to office. I love this clip because it is, pretty much, the kind of activity we are describing in a “marketplace of ideas,” “public town square” or “speaker’s corner.” (This clip is also an example of white propaganda, which I explained in Class 2 and which might be worth revisiting if you are new.)

There’s a lot to say about the substance of what is being said, given its relevance today, but I’d like you to pay attention to the dynamics between the people involved in this scene. A few questions follow — I hope this gives you food for thought until my next lesson!

Questions:

1. What are the roles of the people depicted in this scene? What is their relationship to each other? What kinds of information are they able to take in about one another?

2. If the people listening to this message wanted to spread it, what would they need to do? How far and how fast could it travel from this one speaker alone?

3. How would you know, based on observing this scene, what the “value” of this speech is (i.e., how popular these ideas are)? If you wanted to introduce “competition” for these ideas, what might you do in this setting? How would that impact the speaker depicted here?

4. If there were a competing speaker on the opposite corner of this town square, are there ways in which either could get an unfair advantage over the other? (In other words, how would you “cheat” in this kind of setting to make your viewpoint seem more popular than it actually is?)

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!