A project by Professor Enrique Armijo will explore how liars responding directly to someone else’s lies – flooding the “marketplace of ideas” with ill-informed information – can suppress free speech and harm underrepresented communities .
An Elon law scholar has been named a fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy and Policy, where he aims to protect marginalized groups historically harmed when authorities respond to misinformation in the public dialogue by spreading their own lies.
Professor Enrique Armijo’s work in what he has called the Anti-Lies Project also aims to help platforms like Twitter and Facebook better protect underrepresented users by moderating content based on his theory of how this type of lying can ultimately harm expression free.
“I’ve been writing, teaching and thinking about these areas for a long time,” Armijo said. “This Fellowship will allow me to bring together several issues and arguments in a way that will help IDDP stakeholders, policy makers and others who follow its work and rely on it to make policy recommendations. It will also continue to inform the free speech-related courses I teach.”
The underpinnings of Armijo’s work emerge from the long-held notion that what lies in the public sphere can be challenged and ultimately unmasked by the truth. However, in recent times, not all lies have been confronted with the truth. Instead, various actors in the public dialogue will use their lies, in the words of Trump adviser and media strategist Steve Bannon, who Armijo quotes in his Fellowship application, to “flood the area with shit.” .
The resulting confusion and lack of trust in government, media, or industry inevitably degrades democratic institutions and harms most those whose expressive rights are affected by a “focus on the formal equality of speakers, which in its effect it subordinates the speech of marginalized and underrepresented groups. “
Finally, the Counter-Lie Project will examine the idea that the government has a place in declaring an “official truth” when the harm from competing lies by public figures outweighs any hypothetical concerns about whether the government should intervene in the speech market.
Armijo is a fellow of Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Center for Information, Technology and Public Life. He teaches and researches in the areas of First Amendment, constitutional law, torts, administrative law, media and Internet law, and international freedom of expression.
His scholarship addresses the interaction between new technologies and free speech.
Based in GWU’s School of Media and Public Affairs, the Institute for Data, Democracy and Policy aims to “help the public, journalists and policymakers understand the impact of digital media on public dialogue and opinion and develop sound solutions to disinformation and the ills of others that arise in these spaces.”
The Institute brings together researchers from all academic disciplines, works with mainstream media, advises policymakers in the United States and Europe, and engages with organizations that have significant social impact and reach.
