Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation examines theater, performance, and music in twenty-first-century Spain in order to theorize how the artistic and the mimetic have an impact on the moral, political, and legal limits of freedom of expression. I reflect on the role of activist, political, and abject stances, and argue that art and the imaginary have broadened the legal and moral limits of freedom of expression. To explain this process, I deploy the work of Julia Kristeva on the abject as a perverse violation of norms, prohibitions or laws, a transgression that the subject needs to expel in order to remain a subject. This work also incorporates theories of art and the mimetic dimension regarding the imaginary that draw from Aristotelian theater as well as from the pragmatic approach to literature. I show how activism that can be regarded as art and rests on an almost total taboo, has the potential to loosen a strong social consensus on the limits of freedom of expression. I call these manifestations “aesthetics of the maximum abject” and illuminate how they are a consequence of the Spanish historical period following the social-protest movement known as15-M, a period marked by challenges to the structures of state power and by the Catalan secessionist crisis. This research expands on studies of artistic activism and activist art that have been penalized by the courts and that have been mostly analyzed in the context of authoritarian regimes and dictatorships. Thus, the aesthetics of the maximum abject can be regarded as artistic activism in which, paradoxically, the mimetic dimension matters. It is fundamental to understand the role of art as a vehicle for sociopolitical transformations that have an impact on the limits of what can be said and which, in turn, affect one of the pillars of liberal democracies.

Committee: Ana Elena Puga (Advisor); Ignacio Corona (Committee Member); Dionisio Viscarri (Committee Member); Eugenia Romero (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethics; Language Arts; Law; Legal Studies; Literature; Music; Performing Arts; Philosophy; Theater

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, Mass Communication (Communication)

This virtual ethnographic study was about online communication and the democratic behavior in the Sudan's diaspora. It investigated the possibility of expanding the diasporic political public sphere among Sudanese diaspora by using the six requirements formulated by Licoln Dahlberg (2001a) for a rational-critical discourse of online deliberation of political public issues. The Sudanese diasporic online communities was a product of migration of large number of Sudanese to the Gulf States, the United States, and other regions due to the repressive political environment and bad economic conditions in Sudan and their connection to the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in host societies. I used three methods of data gathering: online survey, online semi-structured in-depth interviews, and online participant observation. The findings of this study have shown that online communication provided diasporic communities with current political information. Sudanese online diasporic members used this political information in holding online political deliberations that enabled them to have freedom of expression and to establish civil society associations. The study found that although some scholars claimed that the provision of political information was not enough to realize political change, the political information that Sudanese diasporic online users got from the website `sudaneseonline.com' was crucial for depriving the current Sudanese Government from claiming democracy, for revealing corruption, for recognizing the manipulation of the Constitution and civil service. Undemocratic governments were keen to control the amount and the type of information their populations can get. The obtaining of political information was a significant factor in undermining undemocratic governments, which employ the resources of the state, including manipulated constitutions and judiciaries, to deprive their populations from acquiring political information, which is a huma (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Steve Howard (Committee Chair) Subjects: African History; Communication; Journalism; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, Communication

There are disagreement and varied results in the research literature when it comes to the relationship between political ideology and support for censorship. In order to better understand how people's self-identification as more liberal or conservative relates to their opinions about expression rights issues, I draw on theory that explains political ideology in terms of ideas about the family. I begin by proposing a model wherein family values and family communication patterns contribute to ideological self-identification, and all three concepts contribute to support for censorship. I then provide detailed definitions of the support for censorship and political ideology concepts. I test the model using data from three samples, collected at different times, using different operationalizations of the concepts of interest. Cluster analysis of family variables and political ideology indicates two groups of respondents that replicate across data sets. Members of the first group come from families with relatively greater conversation orientation in their communication, they also have relatively nurturant family values, are relatively liberal, and support censorship relatively less. Members of the second group come from families with relatively greater conformity orientation in their communication, they also have relatively strict family values, are relatively conservative, and support censorship relatively more. Consistent with the proposed model, individuals who are more strict in terms of their family values tend to be more conservative and support censorship more, whereas individuals who are more nuturant in their family values tend to be more liberal and support censorship less. Additionally, those who come from families where communication is relatively more conformity oriented tend to be relatively more conservative as well. However, family communication was not directly related to support for censorship. Political ideology mediates the relationship between fa (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Andrew Hayes PhD (Advisor); Carroll Glynn PhD (Committee Member); Gerald Kosicki PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Families and Family Life; Journalism; Mass Media; Political Science; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Communication

Web blogs, as alternate sources of political opinion and analysis, have enabled new voices that can empower netizens and democratize information access. Their larger social contribution may be that they increase manifold the ideas available in the marketplace, in theory challenging any information hegemony of an increasingly consolidating corporate media. Bloggers, citizen journalists and others of the fifth estate have joined the social conversation by acting as watchdogs of not just government but also of the corporate media. Libel law, as a determinant of freedom of expression, also defines the democratic values of individual self-fulfillment, marketplace of ideas, and empowerment. Libel lawsuits, however, impose a chilling effect, a chill which is exacerbated for the fifth estate by the challenge of multiple personal jurisdictions – a netizen can be hauled before a court whose location, laws and procedures are hard to predict. The dissertation addresses that express challenge by proposing a separate common jurisdiction for libel cases that emanate in the information society. Specifically, it delineates a normative, inductive, theoretical framework for that common jurisdiction after analyzing the fundamental principles of freedom of expression characterizing jurisprudence. The framework comprises (1) a proposal to extend a reconsidered actual malice doctrine to the fifth estate, (2) a set of recommendations, situated in the libertarian scholarship of Thomas Emerson and John Milton, to define a norm of freedom of expression for the information society, and (3) a model law to deliver the framework to a libel litigant of the fifth estate. The study does not describe the new jurisdiction's executive powers or the treaty terms from which it would draw its authority. That jurisdiction, asserted by an Internet Empowerment Agency born out of international treaty, would decide information society libel cases. The study employs traditional legal analysis and inductive r (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Prabu David (Advisor) Subjects:

MA, Kent State University, 2007, College of Communication and Information / School of Media and Journalism

This study examines the relationship between American high school journalists' First Amendment rights and the quality of work those student journalists produce. Based on a survey of National Scholastic Press Association members, this research shows that there is a positive relationship between student press freedom and publication quality for both newspapers and yearbooks. It also shows relationships between publication quality and other factors, including the a school's attitude toward student press freedom, state student free expression laws, and adviser experience.

Committee: Timothy Smith (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2009, Philosophy, Applied/Institutional Theory and History

This dissertation presents a perfectionist argument for viewpoint neutral free speech. It is argued that developed states ought to maintain or adopt the Viewpoint Neutral Principle: As a matter of public morality, any public institution is disqualified from intentionally aiming to hinder the expression of any viewpoint by suppression except for purposes of temporary censorship to prevent clear, present, and imminent danger. This principle allows for regulation but does not allow for censorship due to objectionable viewpoints. After demonstrating how the standard justifications for free speech are not sufficient for the viewpoint neutral principle, I construct a Millian self-development argument drawing from the oft neglected justification of freedom of speech in On Liberty. Mill argues that a person is not deserving of confidence in his opinion unless he has engaged in certain practices of justification for his own opinions. These practices are the only way to acquire the intellectual virtue of justified belief-forming, and censorship undermines these practices. Furthermore, the intellectual virtue of justified belief forming informs moral virtues which include dispositions to express praise or blame. Censorship can undermine and, in some cases, make impossible the practices of justification. If the state engages in viewpoint specific censorship of public speech, it undermines the individual pursuit of justified opinion to the extent that it hinders critical reflections, adjustment, and exposition of opinions. After explicating the argument itself, I apply the justified opinion argument to one contemporary example. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights under the auspices of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations has passed articles 7/19 and 7/20. These resolutions violate the viewpoint neutral principle. It is argued that developed nations should reject these resolutions in order to preserve (among other things) inte (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Jacobson PhD (Advisor); Fred Miller PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Steven Wall PhD (Committee Member); Ellen Paul PhD (Committee Member); David Jackson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy