Booklash: Literary Freedom, Online Outrage, and Language of Harm
PEN America is an organization that defends freedom of speech for writers worldwide. This thorough report from 2023 studies the negative impact of social media outrage on writers' freedom to address controversial topics. Although the critics in question are often motivated by progressive ideals such as anti-racism, the report argues, our political discourse suffers when publishers over-react by canceling book contracts or revising books without the author's permission. In many of the examples cited, the book's problems were capable of other interpretations, or the author's public behavior was too quickly conflated with the value of the book itself.
Source: https://pen.org/report/booklash/
Categories: Writing for Social Change
