Theoretical Foundations

“In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, focuses on the freedom of opinion and expression aspects of academic freedom, highlighting the special role played by academics and academic institutions in democratic society and noting that, without academic freedom, societies lose one of the essential elements of democratic self-governance: the capacity for self-reflection, for knowledge generation and for a constant search for improvements of people’s lives and social conditions. The Special Rapporteur finds that threats to and restrictions on academic freedom limit the sharing of information and knowledge, an integral component of the right to freedom of expression. He reveals that academics and their institutions face social harassment and State repression for their research, the questions that they pursue, the points that they raise and the methodologies that they bring to bear on public policy – or simply for the stature that their academic work has given them in society. While he focuses on the ways in which the freedom of opinion and expression protects and promotes academic freedom, the Special Rapporteur also recognizes that there is no single, exclusive international human rights framework for the subject. He emphasizes one set of protections for academic freedom, while recognizing and reaffirming others. He concludes with a set of recommendations to States, academic institutions, international organizations and civil society.”

The report, compiled by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), analyzes the impact of AI on digital rights across 14 countries: Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The study finds that unregulated AI-powered surveillance, along with “opaque content moderation practices,” chills speech and activism and restricts media freedom. CIPESA argues that without a rights-centered approach to AI, the technology “risks becoming a powerful tool that deepens existing inequalities, facilitates authoritarian control, and fundamentally undermines democratic values and human rights across the continent.”

Blasi provides, in the context of the US First Amendment, the canonical iteration the notion that free speech performs the function of checking governmental abuse of power, and discusses its utility as a consideration in adjudication on free speech issues.

Published by members of the South East European Network for Professionalization of Media, this report analyzes the state of media and democracy in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey. Based on the map of key indicators and corresponding data, the authors conclude, “as decidedly as ever,” that the region’s media are in a systemic crisis, manifesting in “how they are defined, regulated, owned, financed, and managed.” Among the many factors negatively impacting the media of the Western Balkans and Turkey are journalists’ exposure to pressure and attacks, SLAPPs, small numbers of journalism students, media ownership concentration, lack of transparency, limited representation, political instability, and authoritarianism.

“To what extent do structures and conduct of leading news media correspond with requirements of contemporary democracies? Based on a root concept of democracy and several empirical indicators, the Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) delivers a panorama of the news media’s performance regarding freedom, equality, and control across several countries. In 2011, the MDM analysed 10 democracies. Ten years later, it covers 18 countries worldwide and pinpoints essential strengths and weaknesses during this decade of digitalisation. Around the globe, news [is] highly attractive to users, and the journalistic ethos of watchdogs and investigators is paramount. On the downside, journalistic job security eroded over time, and gender gaps both in content and employment patterns remain strikingly excessive in most countries. Volume one contains countries present in the 2011 MDM edition, allowing for longitudinal comparative analysis: Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Volume two contains all countries analysed for the first time in 2021: Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Chile, Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, and South Korea.”

“This guide was designed as a basic and synthetic input to help judges and legal practitioners across the Americas who must apply international (especially inter-American) standards that enshrine and protect the fundamental right to freedom of expression.” Available only in Spanish.

In this study for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Paula-Charlotte Matlach, Analyst at ISD Germany, and Charlotte Drath, Research Consultant at ISD, examine online gender-based violence on TikTok, which is becoming an important space for political expression. Matlach and Drath have conducted an audit of the platform’s search algorithm and its content moderation on sexual violence and analyzed the harmful gendered content in Hungary and Germany, as well as within the contexts of the 2024 European Parliamentary and French legislative elections. ISD’s key findings show “how digital platforms like TikTok shape the landscape of gendered violence and how online manifestations of discrimination threaten individual rights while undermining democratic principles and institutions.”

This 2025 issue brief, authored by electoral expert Ajay Patel and jointly published by UNESCO and the UN Development Programme, surveys the impact of AI on freedom of expression in the context of elections. Foregrounding international standards on freedom of expression and access to information, the paper aims to inform electoral practitioners on addressing the risks of AI – including deep fakes, voter manipulation, false information, lack of transparency, breaches of data privacy, bias, and gendered disinformation – as well as harnessing its benefits. The latter could contribute to information integrity in free and fair elections through multi-stakeholder coalitions, strategic communication campaigns, media capacity building, digital platforms’ cooperation, and media literacy programs, among others.

A collaboration between the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), the paper interrogates political communication and media trust in the age of AI, along with possible technical and policy solutions. ISD Research Fellows Christian Schwieter and Milan Gandhi start by explaining generative AI systems and survey ways through which political actors have been resorting to AI tools. The report builds on the empirical analysis and tailors its insights for policymakers. One of the recommendations is to “[r]aise awareness of how seemingly non-political uses of generative AI can be exploited for politics, in particular the creation of non-consensual intimate content.” After evaluating emerging solutions, including legislation, the authors conclude with an emphasis on the importance of “restoring citizens’ trust in democratic institutions” and stress that technology regulation and reduction of disinformation are solutions of only a partial nature.

In this segment of the MOOC 'Freedom of Expression in the Age of Globalization' created by Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, Agnès Callamard explores how the various free speech theories have been integrated in a number of global public policy initiatives.