Name: Tiffany Palapo

Social Justice Group: Technology: Online Radicalization

Date of Fieldwork: January 25, 2023

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Jason M. Schultz, Professor of Clinical Law at NYU

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

At 9:00 am on the 25th, my group and I -minus Holly, she was sick- met with Jason Schultz in person. Jason works at NYU as a professor of clinical law. His class is all about the laws against hate speech online so he knew a lot about the lawful side of radicalization online.

One of the important things I learned from Jason was about why extremist/radicalization groups got away with so much online. A main reason is because of The First Amendment, it states that “Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise.” Basically, it protects freedom of speech. The reason why online radical groups get away with so many things they say/post are because of the blurred lines between freedom of speech and indication of taking (violent) action. A perfect example of this is if somebody was bullying a person, a blurred difference would be “Go beat up —-, their no good,” vs. “—- lives at this address, goes to school at 8:15 in the morning and leaves at 3:15.” The first example could easily be sued, however, the second example could not because it is not outright saying ‘go be violent’ to said person, their just stating something on the internet.

There are many other important and helpful things that I have learned from Jason. He was a very helpful source and will definitely play a big role in our project.