The Audience Problem in Online Speech Crimes

Abstract

<p>Drawing from social scientific research, this article identifies and dissects three distinctive features of the digital audience—audience agency, audience obscurity, and audience dislocation—and illustrates their pertinence in the legal interpretation of online speech crimes. The analysis shows that these digital audience characteristics have the effect of enlarging existing jurisprudential gaps. The judicial challenge is particularly evident when judges have to apply laws that were developed in the mass communications era to digital communication, because such laws often contain assumptions about the audience that are no longer accurate. Case law from different common law jurisdictions in public order offenses, harassment, stalking, and threats are used as illustrative examples, along with recommendations about context-sensitive adjustments in the legal interpretation of each of these language crimes. Overall, I demonstrate the kind of interdisciplinary contextual analysis that would benefit a legal system in adapting to the challenges of a new and rapidly evolving speech environment.</p>