Reading Analysis #3: Proposal for Research Project

Billie Hiraishi
Patricia Andrews
Media, Politics, & Society
November 3, 2010

Do Online ‘Hate Sites’ Deserve Protection From the First Amendment?

According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization that confronts anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism and promotes human rights and dignity reported that there are over 11,500 web sites, social network pages, chat forums, and blogs advocating hatred of extremist. The internet has become the primary media outlet most people in this generation use automatically, but anyone has the right to write their own opinion on a blog or create a website and the issue is that under certain circumstances, individuals and groups take advantage of this right. Therefore the question I came up with is, “Do Online ‘Hate Sites’ Deserve Protection From the First Amendment (Freedom of Speech)?” “Hate Sites” also known as “Hate Speech” is defined as any form of communication that “disparages” a person or group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

Besides not reading much about online issues from the given text Taking Sides, I remember reading a short article in the Spring of this year from the New York Times entitled, “Online hate sites grow with social networks,” which helped me come up with this topic. The article’s main point was to inform the public of how online hate sites are using online social networks to inform people about their group. The main online hate sites that I will be mentioning in my survey and research include American servers such as the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, Christian Identity, Black separatist, neo-Confederate, White Conservative, and pro-Jewish (Some countries such as European countries have strict anti-hate laws, making it hard to find online hate sites).

Hate sites have always been an issue as the internet developed into an advanced resource for information and has started many debates in questioning the First Amendment; therefore, the questions I will ask on my survey will focus on ones belief in the First Amendment and their personal opinion on hate sites. I plan on surveying a variety of students on campus using the format of traditional hard copy questioning, including yes or no and multiple choice questions. An idea that I have is to include a few personal questions at the top of the survey such as; What is your major? What ethnic group do you classify yourself as? If any, what religion do you practice? The reason I want to incorporate this into my survey is so I can get a better understanding of the surveyee and how their personal information may affect their answers to the survey questions. I haven’t come up with the questions for the official survey that I am going to use for my research, but I have ideas of how I want them to be.

When answering the question, do Online ‘Hate Sites’ Deserve Protection From the First Amendment? I believe people would automatically answer yes agreeing that online hate sites have the right to write whatever they believe because of their right to freedom of speech, allowing those hate sites to express information, opinions, and ideas free of government restrictions. In my opinion in relation to my survey, this is a very intense subject to research and when people take the survey they will be emotionally distracted of the kinds of disturbing information they have access to on these hate sites. Therefore, my hypothesis is that although hate sites are already protected under the First Amendment of freedom of speech, people will answer no because of their personal and emotional beliefs when coming across an extremely racist and judgmental hate site.