The First Amendment covers several types of speech. These include freedoms of religious and artistic expression. There have been numerous court decisions that have broadened the scope of speech definition to encompass nonverbal, visual, and symbolic forms. The surest way to know you are aligned with the confines of the law is knowledge of the types of speech not covered by the First Amendment. This would include perjury, fraud, defamation, obscene speech, incitement of panic, incitement to crime, “fighting words,” and sedition (Reynolds, 2014).
There are many examples of the First Amendment as it applies to cyberspace. In 1997, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a workplace harassment lawsuit, which is still pending. Employees were sending derogatory e-mails that were insulting to other creeds and cultures. This resulted in a discrimination lawsuit and changes in corporate e-mail policy. The New Jersey Office of Administrative Law recently found a single incident of a long joke list being forwarded by e-mail to the whole department to be” sexual harassment, ” creating an “ offensive work environment” (Volokh, 2000). Awareness has been raised in recent years in regard to cyberbullying. This First Amendment exemption and the recent rise of suicides in which digital technology, the Internet and social media have played a role is extremely troubling, especially insofar as the victims in these cases seem to belong predominantly to one often discriminated against group (Merril. 2000). These rights are there to protect the creativity of your Facebook page, allowing for artistic expression. The same page can be out of compliance with the law if it contains obscene speech or defamation. “The beauty of the First Amendment is that it protects all kinds of speech” (Merril, 2000).

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Works Cited
Reynolds, G. W. (2014). Ethics in Information