Law Commons^™

The Needle And The Damage Done: The Pervasive Presence Of Obsolete Mass Media Audience Models In First Amendment Doctrine, Mehmet Konar-Steenberg

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Do audiences need the government's protection from mass media? Or are they capable of choosing media and protecting themselves? For decades, judicial opinion on this issue developed in the form of judicial notice, speculation, and assumption. Yet during that time, a rich social science discipline was emerging that could have helped to address these issues based on empirical research about mass media effects and audiences. Given the renewed importance of this issue, it is time to bridge the gap between the law of mass media content regulation and the social science research into mass media consumption.

To that end, this …