The second episode of FSD’s monthly podcast looks at free speech in India, internet censorship in China and Facebook’s attitude towards privacy.

In the second instalment of On Free Speech, hosts Katie Engelhart and Brian Pellot chat to Faisal Devji, a rising star in modern South Asian history, about free speech in India and author Salman Rushdie’s decision to pull out of the Jaipur Literature Festival following alleged threats of violence. The incident, says Devji, was a “tempest in a teapot” and ultimately, not connected to free speech. Team member Amy Qin, an MPhil candidate in politics, explains how internet censorship in China works. “Its really a complex thing the Great Firewall but it’s not so much a wall as an onion,” says Qin. And of course, we have snippets from our Facebook event with Lord (Richard) Allan, the organisation’s head of public policy in Europe, as well as from interviews with Tim Wu, author of the Master Switch, on internet giants such as Twitter, and Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, on the broadcaster’s decision to air the controversial Jerry Springer: The Opera.

You can subscribe to our Oxford University podcast channel here or our iTunes page here.

Mark Zuckerberg (left) and Salman Rushdie (right, photos by Guillaume Paumier and David Shankbone respectively under a Creative Commons Attribution licence).

Read more:

BlasphemyChinaChristianityFacebookIndiaInternetLiteraturePrivacySocial mediaTwitter