공론장 법리의 확장: 선출직 공직자들의 소셜 미디어 활용과 관련하여

Certain expressive activities require an access to places of expression. Especially, for citizens who can not access the mass media to deliver their messages, the places of expression have a great significance. These places are where we can communicate with other fellow citizens, and public opinion is formed through that communication. The United States Supreme Court called these spaces public fora, where the government must ensure citizens’ expressive activities and allow them to freely express what they want to say without exclusion or discrimination based on a viewpoint. Unlike the shrinking of public fora in real space, the internet is attracting attention with its role of expanding the scope of public fora. In particular, when politicians use social media like Twitter and Facebook as channels for policy publishing, opinion gathering, and public opinion formation, social media sites as an interactive place function as a venue where citizens can petition to elected officials, criticize government policies, and exchange opinions one another. Accordingly, the social media sites which is essentially private space, are paradoxically becoming public space. Therefore, guaranteeing expressive activities there is one of the new challenges of constitutional jurisprudence. With reference to the US case, this article examines whether the social media, when used by elected officials, constitute a public forum. If so, it further examines the limitations of elected officials’ power to block or censor expressions of constituents based on a political point of view.