The Charlie Hebdo attacks fueled an online debate over freedom of expression and religion, whereas the purpose of social media evolved into a humanitarian one following the November 13 attacks in Paris. This research looks into the individual evolutions of the related hashtags that surfaced in 2015, including #JeSuisCharlie (and its opposites, such as #JeNeSuisPasCharlie), #DonDuSang, #PorteOuverte and #RechercheParis, among others. Another research point was with the September 11 attacks—with the 9/11 attacks against the United States, few to no channels were available for the kind of immediate discussions and support seen after the Paris attacks. After spending time in Paris during the spring 2015 semester and researching the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the history of the publication, the conclusion rests on the idea that the online discussions perpetuated by both supporters and dissenters of the magazine contribute to a more robust, open democracy supported by these social media platforms.
A portion of this thesis also delves into the parallels and differences between the American First Amendment and the French free speech laws—all of which pertain to the Charlie Hebdo content and the online responses to the 2015 Paris attacks.
The interviews conducted include a French art history professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris, two creators of the “Je Suis Charlie” Facebook page, an American journalist living in Paris who covered the Charlie Hebdo attack and who was present during the November attacks, and a Muslim-American doctor in Phoenix who founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. The ideas surrounding free speech, the value of art such as that found within the pages of Charlie Hebdo, the media’s treatment of religion, traditional democratic freedoms and ties to social media revolutions are all components of this research thesis.
In the 1930 US federal court case United States v. Dennett, Mary Coffin Ware Dennett was cleared of all charges of violating the anti-obscenity Comstock Act, a charge she had incurred by distributing her sex education pamphlet called The Sex Side of Life: An Explanation for Young People. The United States Postal Service charged Dennett under the Comstock Act, which prohibited the distribution of sex-related materials through the mail. The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, New York, ruled that material needed to be considered in context and could not be considered obscene if it was not intended to sexually arouse an individual. The court's ruling in the appeals case of United States v. Dennett questioned the merits of the Hicklin test, used by courts to determine whether an item had an obscene component or intent, and contributed to the dissolution of the Comstock Act, thus legalizing access to materials about contraception and reproductive health.
In Stuart v. Camnitz, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the decision of a North Carolina District Court that declared a controversial ultrasound mandate for abortions unconstitutional in 2014. The ultrasound mandate was a part of the Woman’s Right to Know Act introduced in North Carolina in 2011, which placed several restrictions on abortion care providers in the state. If enforced, the ultrasound mandate would have required physicians to perform an ultrasound on every patient before an abortion and simultaneously describe the resulting image of the fetus regardless of whether the woman wanted to hear the description. The District Court ruled the mandate an unconstitutional violation of physicians’ free speech rights. The Fourth Circuit Court’s decision to affirm the District Court’s ruling established that the state could not compel healthcare providers to recite what the court called state ideology to patients against their medical judgment, which broke with precedent set by prior rulings by the Fifth and Eighth Circuit Courts in similar cases.
The North Carolina state legislature passed The Woman’s Right to Know Act in 2011, which places several restrictions on abortion care in the state. The Woman’s Right to Know Act, or the Act, imposes informed consent requirements that physicians must fulfill before performing an abortion as well as a twenty-four hour waiting period between counseling and the procedure for people seeking abortion, with exceptions for cases of medical emergency. Then-governor of North Carolina Beverly Perdue initially vetoed House Bill 854, which contained the Act, but the state legislature overrode her veto to pass the bill. In response to a lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, and other organizations filed in 2011, a US district court judge blocked the law’s ultrasound mandate from going into effect and a later court case determined that the mandate was illegal. With the passage of the Act in North Carolina, the state passed several abortion regulations and mandated that abortion providers must inform women of specific details about their pregnancy before performing the abortion procedure.
In 2003, the Texas state legislature passed the Woman’s Right to Know Act, hereafter the Act, as Chapter 171 of the state’s Health and Safety Code. The Act sets requirements that physicians must follow during the informed consent process for abortion, or a medical procedure to terminate pregnancy, in Texas. Lawmakers amended the Act and added several additional regulations that restrict access to abortion in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. For instance, the Act requires that physicians perform abortions after sixteen weeks of pregnancy in ambulatory surgical centers or hospitals and states that physicians must perform an ultrasound to view images, called sonograms, of a developing fetus inside a woman’s uterus before a woman may receive an abortion. The Act further requires practitioners and clinics to offer state-developed informational materials to women who seek an abortion. The Act placed several restrictions on abortion care in Texas, making it more difficult for women to access safe and legal abortion care, which opponents have challenged in courts.