Freedom of speech is under serious threat in the west, primarily in the US with policies and regulations infringing on this core value in democratic societies. Universities form policy in order to silence opinions they find contradictory to their values, causing students and teachers alike to risk academic punishment for statements which normally would be guarded within the First Amendment. The central argument behind these infringments are individuals subjective feelings towards, as one may put it, controversial opinions. The aim of this study is through an argument analysis, illustrate the values of freedom of speech in contrast to the demands of primarily minority groups and their advocates, using respectable philosophers and scientists such as John Stuart Mill to answer the question if infringements are applicable in democracies. The conclusions drawn in this essay based on all relevant arguments concludes the answer to be no; a democracy should not infringe on the freedom of speech to safeguard individuals from negative emotional reactions as a result of any legal speech.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur två terrordåd har skildrats i Aftonbladet. De studerade terrordåden är attacken mot Charlie Hebdos redaktion i januari 2015 samt terrorattentatet i Köpenhamn i februari samma år. De frågor som ligger till grund för undersökningen är: Hur skildras de båda händelserna i Aftonbladet? Hur framställs offer respektive förövare? Hur yttrar sig diskussionen om yttrandefrihet? Finns det några likheter och skillnader i rapporteringen, exempelvis vad det gäller närhetsprincipen? Jag har dessutom valt att undersöka hur Aftonbladet har förhållit sig till de pressetiska reglerna. För att besvara mina frågeställningar har jag valt att utgå från de två första dagarna av rapporteringarna, samt två sammanhängande dagar en vecka efter rapporteringens första dag. Detta har motiverats med en tes om att diskussionen om yttrandefriheten ska vara tydligare en tid efter händelserna inträffat. Materialet omfattar såväl nyheter, ledare, krönikor och debattartiklar och har analyserats med en kvalitativ ansats. Samtliga 45 artiklar kommer först att analyseras med en övergripande tematisk analys. Därefter har en mer djupgående granskning genomförts, då med hjälp av Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys där fokus har lagts på en lexikal nivå. De teoretiska ramarna för studien är journalistik och demokrati, yttrandefrihet, journalistisk etik samt teorier om hate speech. Jag har också valt att undersöka hur närhetsprincipen, domesticering och personifiering har yttrat sig i rapporteringarna. Min studie har visat att rapporteringen delar ett gemensamt fokus på de misstänkta gärningsmännen. Det är också främst i rapporteringen kring dessa som Aftonbladet har begått pressetiska snedsteg. Vad det gäller porträtteringen av offer får den svenska konstnären Lars Vilks en tydlig huvudroll i dramat då han personifierar alla offer. Här är det också tydligt att nyheterna har domesticeras. I fallet Charlie Hebdo får alla enskilda offer i princip samma utrymme, även om attacken huvudsakligen beskrivs som en attack mot det fria ordet. I fallet Charlie Hebdo genomsyras rapporteringen av en diskussion om yttrandefrihet, medan den i rapporteringen om Köpenhamnsdåden är mer implicit uttryckt. Däremot har analysen visat att det finns ett behov av att omformulera den journalistiska etiken i takt med att nyheter tenderar att bli allt mer globala.

On January 7th, 2015, two gunmen attacked the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Later identified as two French brothers of Algerian descent linked to Al-Qaeda, the shooting was perceived as a targeted and deliberate attack on the freedom of speech. Millions throughout the world declared "Je suis Charlie," in solidarity with the victims and in defense of free speech. Critics argued back and forth over whether Charlie Hebdo's right to free speech is in fact absolute, or if it's content could be considered hate speech. This thesis offers an alternative angle to this discourse, and that is a discussion on the narratives of French identity at play within the Je suis Charlie movement. What did it mean to declare oneself Charlie? Who was not Charlie, and why? These are the questions I seek to answer in my thesis by placing the event within the historical context of French Enlightenment, Revolution, and colonialism.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how the topic of immigration was framed by the two French newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro in their political online sections during the two weeks following the terror attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015. Applying frame analyses on textual articles published during this time, this paper can conclude that five frames manifested themselves. Furthermore, a high degree of political parallelism, characterized by what Robert Entman refers to as content biased news coverage, was detected that greatly distinguished the two newspapers coverage of immigration. Le Monde, commonly erred to as a left-centrist paper, never openly criticized the ruling leftist government during the time frame studied. Contrastingly, Le Figaro, commonly referred to as a right-centrist paper, was overtly sceptic towards the socialist party, and framed multiple articles arguing that the right-wing populist party Front National was unjustly treated by the left as well as arguing for the legitimacy of the right-center party UMP. Based on the theoretical approach of framing, this thesis concludes that the media culture of both Le Monde and Le Figaro display characteristics greatly influenced by their political orientations. This paper also concludes that the two newspapers’ framing of the immigration topic was directly and consequently related to actions by the controversial right-wing populist party Front National. This implies a salience of ideological orientation of the newspapers in their framing of the news framing.Whether and how this framing of the news related to the terror attacks affected the opinions of their readers would be an interesting focus for future research.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the underlying meaning of the concept of freedom of speech in Swedish media debate in context of Swedish public libraries. The analysis was done by discourse analysis based on Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory. The analyzed material consisted of newspaper articles, chronicles and leaders from four different newspapers:Göteborgs Posten, Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Biblioteksbladet. In total, the material consisted of 9 articles. During the analysis, we noted two discourses, a cultivating discourse and a selection discourse. Thru out the debate, there is a common assessment that the citizens of society should have access to the information they desire. The librarians also have a desire to maintain a good quality of material and the best solution is to decide together with the users how to develop the collections. The skills of librarians are needed and trusted, but the user’s need should have more influence when it comes to purchasing.

Media plays a significant role in people’s daily life, as it is the first lens through which people see events and phenomena happening worldwide. This research aims to investigate how Al-Jazeera (AJ) and Le Monde (LM) portray and frame the victims and perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attack on the 7th of January 2015. The process of framing and representation are investigated as to whether there are similarities and/or differences in the identities of victims and perpetrators between AJ and LM. Adopting a social constructivist perspective and by using Entman’s framing theory, along with both social representation theory and social identity theory. A qualitative content analysis is conducted. The findings indicate certain similarities in how these two media outlets frame the victims and the perpetrators of the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo such as arguing that the perpetrators’ action does not represent Islam. Both medias also try to create a certain level of proximity with the victims. When it comes to the framing of the perpetrators, more differences appear: while AJ frames them as heroes avenging the prophet, LM framed them as stupid people making unprofessional mistakes.

The aim of this work is explanation of the concept of homegrown terrorism based on an analysis of selected terrorist attacks; and creates a definition for this completely new phenomenon. For the processing of the topic I chose a comparative case study method, which is applied to the exploration of three terrorist attacks (terrorist attacks in London 2005, attacks in editorial office of Charlie Hebdo in 2015 and terrorist attacks in Paris 2015). Basic investigated dependent variable is homegrown terrorism and the independent variables are concepts "belonging" and "autonomy". Variables that are connected to the concept of "belonging" include the origin of the attackers and links to the Western countries, the concept of "autonomy" is linked to the independence of the attackers to terrorist groups abroad and self-training of the attackers and finally motives of the attackers include the role of religion, the social situation of the attackers and hatred of invaders towards the West. The variables above are applied to each terrorist attack separately in the form of table data. Each dependent and independent variable may be positive or negative. According to this research, I found that each particular attack was different in certain characteristics from the previous one and therefore it is difficult to...

A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Applied Ethics for Professionals, September 2017 / The cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad on the front cover of various issues of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, leading up to the 2015 terrorist attack have been seen by many to be harmful and offensive. This report argues that, from a liberal perspective, the cartoonists did not do anything morally wrong by publishing these cartoons. In fact, it is argued that the cartoonists were morally justified in publishing these cartoons because they were protecting the liberal value of free speech. I argue that both the act of publishing these cartoons, as well as the actual content of these cartoons were morally justifiable. Arguments against the cartoons pertaining to both harm and offence are proven to be unsound. Furthermore, when balancing the seriousness of the offence with the reasonableness of the cartoons, it becomes clear that the offence is not as serious as some may think. / XL2018

This study examines the reactions — both in real life and on social media — to two terrorist attacks in Paris: satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and the Bataclan shooting in November 2015. Using Richard Sennett's Fall of Public Man and Antonin Artaud's Le théâtre et son double to explore these reactions as theater, this approach reveals the religious nature of supposedly secular reactions to religious extremism.

Media and terrorism is said to have a symbiotic relationship: terrorists want publicity whilst media wants to publish. There is a consensus that threat such as terrorism increases authoritarian attitudes in societies – but studies on how the media reports on terrorism is still a relatively unexplored area of research, at least outside of the US. The events of 9/11 has contributed heavily to the research on media and terrorism, suggesting that terrorism-related reporting is dominated by an authoritarian discourse, namely George Bush’s War on Terror. However, questions on whether this trend is transferable to other countries or if there are alternative discourses remain unclear. Using critical discourse analysis on French editorials after the three major terrorist attacks 2015-2016 (Charlie Hebdo, Paris and Nice), this paper aims to bring new light to the research on media discourses about terrorism. Out of 27 editorials, six discourses were identified: three authoritarian discourses and three counter-discourses. My findings suggest that both authoritarian discourses and counter-discourses occur more or less to an equal extent and propose a framework to analyse them.