The End of the Wild World Web? Internet Freedom in the 21st Century

This talk by Viv Regan is last in the series Writing Wrongs, curated by Deborah Lavin as part of the Heritage Lottery funded project Victorian Blogging.

Viv Regan of Spiked will explore the threats to open debate and blogging online and discuss what has happened to the lost promise of internet freedom. The internet is still the main way through which human beings access information and express themselves, and it is more revolutionary than even the printing press was, allowing for instant and potentially universal publication and discussion. But now, the unregulated freedom that was once hailed is now viewed as dangerous. Today, the focus is always on the internet’s ‘dark side’. Blogs are shut down, individuals arrested and the overall effect is to tighten state control over the new media at the expense of free expression and democracy. What is the future of this wild world web; surely its freedom must be taken more seriously, and defended anew?

—

Viv Regan is managing editor of Spiked, an online political magazine, and director of the Young Journalists’ Academy. Viv was previously co-director of WORLDwrite, an education charity, and WORLDbytes, an online citizen-TV channel.