Group Discussion

23/02/15

Freedom Of Speech And Censorship

For my personal development project i was asked to host a discussion to the rest of my group on the subject freedom of speech and censorship. I was to work in a pair to gather some research on the topic and to think of potential question to ask to get the group thinking and involved in the discussion. 

We started off the discussion by explaining the definitions of freedom of speech and censorship and the legal restrictions on the freedom of speech rights we have so that the group have at least a basic understanding of the topic we are discussing in order for them to then later get involved without being too confused on what it is they are talking about.
The questions and involvement we presented to the group where they had a chance to get involved we kept basic and related them to everyday normal situations so that the group would be able to contribute.
We started off the presentation by showing a contrast of restriction in different places. The examples we used for this was the west burro baptist church street protests, which we explained were offensive and insulting in the manner that they did so to some people (for example they are very homophobic and state some nasty things about gay people) these protests however are not stopped by the police.  we placed this next to a situation in England where a drunk man was immediately arrested upon being racist to another individual. We asked the group after this slide and got them to think more about the universal moral code of this idea of freedom of speech and asked that if its restrictions are put in place to stop offence or upset being caused to some then should there be this amount of variation (for example some subjects are ok others are not), and as a whole reminded them that these restrictions are laws put in place by other people and not necessarily right or wrong (for example in your own company you can say what ever you want with no restrictions, your mind will not restrict what you say or think). 

We then moved on to censorship in design and posed the question of what aspects should censorship be present in. For example we showed them some information on the Charly Hebdo incident in paris where terrorist murdered designers who made offensive cartoon of muslims in their opinion. We then asked that if the situation is going to cause a dangerous situation should censorship be enforced. This got the group talking a bit more as it was a topic that instigates feeling of oppression if this was to happen.
We also asked if the artists involved in these cartoon abused their rights of freedom of speech by having these cartoons available to the public. Or if it was just harmless jokes (they did not just target one religion they also included christianity and other religious cartoons in their work).


Moving on from this example we also included a perhaps more relatable example of whether things should be censored if they will cause dangerous situations by showing the group the topic of the recent cyber terrorist threats made by north Korea with regards to the recent film 'The Interview" which the majority of our group had heard about and was targeted at our groups age swell so this was perhaps a more personal example to give. (should we not be allowed to see this film because of these threats or other peoples offensive take on the piece).

Again keeping the topic ideas relatable to the group we looked into the censorship of games. And the idea of video games causing violence in game players. We used some facts in the slide to show points from both sides of the argument of the censorship of games and then asked the group to give their opinion on this and a lot of debate was created.

To turn the debate in a more unusual way also and to get the group thinking about things they probably hadn't thought of to bring to the discussion yet we decided to look at personal censorships. With regards to tattoos and the female body as our two examples but the group got involved and more examples were included and discussed into the debate. This also got us talking about the more subliminal censorships that exist in modern society and social pressures that are created. Religion, women's make up, tattoos in work place, woman's body exposure, piercings in the workspace, hair colours. These were some of the topics of personal censorship we discussed.
The n we took the discussion to the internet and discussed how the internet is not regulated in the same way as outside of the internet and people are much more likely to get away with saying things that breech the freedom of speech right. Also people can daily broadcast their opinions or points to a larger audience.
We discussed how this could be bad but also good and gave example s for both in our presentation

REVIEW:
overall i thought our discussion went well, the points we made flowed from one another and everyone in the group had something to say and often brought in their own personal findings and examples of the topics which were interesting to hear. We showed the group various videos swell to break the presentation up so that the group was not just reading things of a screen the whole time (even though when there was things to read we did speak to the group and explained them ourselves), videos also show more real examples. We also included many pictures to gives more of a sense of what we were talking about.