The right to be forgotten is an emerging legal concept allowing individuals control over their online identities by demanding that Internet search engines remove certain results. The right has been supported by the European Court of Justice, some judges in Argentina, and data-protection regulators in several European countries, among others. The right is primarily grounded in notions of privacy and data protection but also relates to intellectual property, reputation, and right of publicity. Scholars and courts cite, as an intellectual if not legal root for the right to be forgotten, the legal principle that convicted criminals whose sentences are completed should not continually be publicly linked with their crimes. Critics contend that the right to be forgotten stands in conflict with freedom of expression and can lead to revisionist history. Scholars and others in the southern cone of South America, in particular, have decried the right to be forgotten because it could allow perpetrators of mass human rights abuses to cover up or obscure their atrocities. On the other hand, those in favor of the right to be forgotten say that digital technology preserves memory unnaturally and can impede forgiveness and individual progress. The right to be forgotten debate is far from resolved and poses difficult questions about access to, and control of, large amounts of digital information across national borders. Given the global nature of the Internet and the ubiquity of certain powerful search engines, the questions at issue are universal, but solutions thus far have been piecemeal. Although a 2014 decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) garnered much attention, the right to be forgotten has been largely shaped by a 1995 European Union Directive on Data Protection. In 2016, the EU adopted a new General Data Protection Regulation that will take effect in 2018 and could have a major impact because it contains an explicit right to be forgotten (also called right to erasure). The new regulation does not focus on the theoretical or philosophical justification for a right to be forgotten, and it appears likely the debate over the right in the EU and beyond will not be resolved even when the new rule takes effect.

Mass communication law and policy research, including on values and theory of freedom of expression, has played an important role in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly for decades. Mass communication law research in Quarterly reached a high point with a special issue on the First Amendment in 1992 and numerous articles in the decade that followed. A relationship is explored between First Amendment theory and structural archetypes of constitutional argument. Future research could focus on international law and contemporary challenges involving technology, surveillance and changes in democratic citizenship.

racy in Iraq and elsewhere, restricting information domestically undermines the strength of U.S. policies about the importance of transparency in government. As it continues to promote free flow of information abroad, the U.S. government's half-hearted commitment to domestic dissemination of certain government-sponsored information will be increasingly scrutinized and criticized. This issue is of importance not only for the policy objectives of the U.S. government but for the continued worldwide belief in the value of access to information as the basis for rational self governance. Various scholars have examined the U.S. government's international propaganda efforts. For example, one writer chronicled the subversive radio activities of the U.S. government-primarily the Central Intelligence Agency-during World War II. 6 Another researcher documented the international implications, including Cold War-related U.S. propaganda efforts overseas, of the American civil rights movement in the mid-20th century, 7 and yet another wrote about the U.S. government's efforts to destabilize and culturally infiltrate Eastern Europe's Communist Party regimes during the early years of the Cold War. 8 Other studies have focused on the impact of wartime propaganda and other government conduct on press freedom 9 and on various aspects of twentieth century U.S. propaganda. 10 Yet the literature on international U.S. propaganda has devoted very little attention to the Smith-Mundt Act's domestic dissemination ban. The researchers who have touched on the topic have not, for the most part, examined the impact of contemporary communication technologies and their policy implications. This article examines the history and intent of the Smith-Mundt Act's prohibition of domestic dissemination of U.S. propaganda aimed at international audiences, and the subsequent creation of the U.S. Information Agency as the chief propaganda arm of govern-THE BAN ON DOMESTIC PROPAGANDA 3 6

In the last decade, the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts have fashioned the -principle that the First Amendment does not limit the government's ability to determine the content of its own messages. Yet the Supreme Court has not defined what is meant by “government speech.” Defined broadly, it may encompass viewpoint-based messages on controversial social issues, privately funded advocacy on behalf of certain industries, and official endorsement of certain ideologies. In the face of this uncertainty, and confronted with numerous recent cases in which the government asserts its right to expression, the U.S. courts of appeal have devised three major approaches to distinguishing government speech from private speech. The Supreme Court touched on aspects of these approaches in an important 2005 opinion, yet significant questions remain about the definitional contours of the Court's developing government speech doctrine.

In his 1941 short story "The Library of Babel," Jorge Luis Borges imagined an infinite Library whose books contained all knowledge in the Universe. When people discovered this grand secret, they felt great joy because the solutions to the world's problems-as well as the answers to life's mysteries, the explanation for each individual's existence, and prophecies of the future-were within their grasp if they could just find the right book. They began searching the Library intently.Yet the promise of all knowledge proved hollow because, although the Library surely had a comprehensive catalog somewhere, no one could find the key to access the information. Not even the librarians could control the chaos that resulted from individuals frantically searching for knowledge but being unable to reliably find what they wanted and needed. The result was depression, fighting, death, and looming extinction.In today's world, it is not difficult to look at Borges' Library and see Big Data, with its promise of answers, solutions, and knowledge. But as with the Library of Babel, the key to avoiding severe Big Data disappointment is unlocking the mechanism that controls access to the knowledge contained in the virtually limitless digital information that surrounds us. This special issue did not set out to answer life's mysteries or solve the world's problems. Instead, we and the authors attempt, in the context of mass communication, to explore the problems and possible solutions surrounding the issue of who controls Big Data and how to access the information contained therein.The Call for Papers for the special issue went out at the end of 2014. Thirty-eight papers were submitted by the deadline of June 1, 2015. The lead authors of the 38 manuscripts submitted for the special issue were affiliated with a variety of institutions in six different countries. More than 100 peer reviewers read and critiqued the manuscripts. In the end, the eight articles published here were determined to be of high quality and representative of the issues encompassed within the parameters of the special issue. We wish to thank the reviewers as well as all the authors, regardless of whether their articles are published here or not, for their contributions.We also thank Dr. Louisa Ha of Bowling Green State University and the editor of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. Dr. Ha adeptly guided the conceptualization and development of this special issue. She answered our numerous questions by phone, email, and over lunch in Santiago, Chile. Dhiman Chattopadhyay deserves special mention for expert editorial assistance.The articles in this special issue present important questions that can be loosely grouped into three categories even though the manuscripts themselves are difficult to 646790J MQXXX10.