Freedom of speech under threat? How political attitudes and individual experiences shape perceptions of freedom of speech in Germany

Abstract

Freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental human rights in modern democracies. On the one hand, it enables individual personal development and the formation of opinions. On the other hand, it is central to the functioning of democratic processes as it allows divergent views to be expressed publicly, articulated to politicians, and consensual solutions to political issues to be reached in free, discursive negotiation processes (Garton Ash, 2016; Klausmann, 2019). Considering this, it seems worrying that a large and increasing proportion of the population seems to perceive freedom of speech as restricted, as initial studies suggest (Köcher, 2019; Petersen, 2021). However, it is still unclear and largely unexplored what leads to this assessment of the current situation of freedom of expression in Germany. Therefore, this exploratory study aims to identify possible factors explaining such a perception. For this purpose, we conducted a quota-based online survey of 945 people in Germany in early 2020. Given the limited number of relevant studies, we consider a broad range of theoretically derived (individual) factors that potentially determine the perception of freedom of speech. The factors can be assigned to four blocks: (1) political predispositions, (2) individual handling of conflicts, (3) sanctions resulting from opinion expression, and (4) issue awareness and media use. The results show that political predispositions such as political trust, relative deprivation, and party preferences (especially for the right-wing populist AfD) are most strongly related to the perception of freedom of speech. Overall, however, a considerable proportion of people across the survey see problems with the current state of freedom of speech. Possible causes and implications, as well as resulting research desiderata are discussed.