Robert Sharp

Barrister

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Thompson Airways, Syria Speaks and Thoughtcrime

24 July 2017 / / 0 Comments

My colleague Jo Glanville was on the Victoria Derbyshire programme last Friday, condemning the treatment of Faizah Shaheen by Thompson Airways.

Faizah Shaheen and Joanna Gosling

Faizah Shaheen (pictured) and Jo Glanville were interviewed by Joanna Gosling on the BBC Victoria Derbshire Programme. You can watch the interview on the BBC iPlayer until 19 August 2017.

Last year, Faizah was reported to counter-terrorism police by Thompson Airways staff after she was seen reading Syria Speaks, a book about the art and culture that has persisted in Syria despite the hideous civil war that has ravaged the country.
Some viewers watching the programme were extremely dismissive of Faizah’s complaint and the wider freedom of expression concerns that Jo Glanville raised. Continue reading

Quoted in The Bookseller Condeming a Visa Refusal

21 July 2017 / / 0 Comments

An Iranian childrens’ book illustrator Ehsan Abdollahi has been denied a visa to visit the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Publishers have branded the decision “disgusting”.
The Bookseller broke the story and I’m quoted in Heloise Wood’s report, commenting for English PEN. Continue reading

The 'Marketplace of Ideas' Probably Doesn't Exist. What Does That Mean For Free Speech?

20 July 2017 / / 6 Comments

Amid all the concern about ‘Fake News’ and the increasing polarisation in politics, there is a psychological insight that I have seen explained and shared in many forms: when presented with a fact that contradicts a strongly held belief, people often reject the fact and double-down in their belief.
This is the Backfire Effect, a phrase coined by the American academics Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler. Here’s part of the abstract to their 2006 paper ‘When Corrections Fail‘:

Can these false or unsubstantiated beliefs about politics be corrected? Previous studies have not tested the efficacy of corrections in a realistic format. We conducted four experiments in which subjects read mock news articles that included either a misleading claim from a politician, or a misleading claim and a correction. Results indicate that corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group. We also document several instances of a “backfire effect” in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.

Continue reading

The Thirteenth Doctor

18 July 2017 / / 2 Comments

Jodie Whittaker has been cast as the next star of Doctor Who—the first woman to play the rôle. There has been much discussion about the significance of this: Of the slow but noticeable trend towards more female characters leading major science fiction and fantasy stories; and about the backlash from those men who oppose this trend in general, and the casting of a female Doctor in particular. Continue reading

Google Search Links To This Blog Suppressed by Right To Be Forgotten Laws

14 June 2017 / / 0 Comments

Well, this is interesting.

Due to a request under data protection law in Europe, Google can no longer show one or more pages from your site in Google Search results. This only affects responses to some search queries for names or other personal identifiers that might appear on your pages. Only results on European versions of Google are affected. No action is required from you.
These pages haven’t been blocked entirely from our search results. They’ve only been blocked on certain searches for names on European versions of Google Search. These pages will continue to appear for other searches. We aren’t disclosing which queries have been affected.

This is the first time this has happened to me. Continue reading

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