Article Title

Who is ‘SLAPPing’ Whom?

Authors

Juan Chavarria, Emporia State UniversityFollow
Javier Flores, Emporia State UniversityFollow
Salman Mostafa, Emporia State UniversityFollow
Marian Riedy, Emporia State UniversityFollow

Keywords

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, Anti-SLAPP, Text Mining

Abstract

A majority of the states and the District of Columbia have enacted “anti-SLAPP” statutes, which set forth a procedure for obtaining an early dismissal of a “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” or a “SLAPP,” as labeled by George W. Pring and Penelope Canan. These types of cases, often alleging defamation or a similar tort, should be discouraged, according to the anti-SLAPP advocates, because the true intent of the plaintiff is to “chill” speech rather than obtain compensation. The paradigm of a SLAPP is a lawsuit filed by a large, well-funded corporation against an “ordinary citizen” who has spoken out in some public forum against the interests of the business. We conducted an empirical study to determine whether this “David v Goliath” scenario holds, or to answer the question: Who is “SLAPPing” whom? Using text mining techniques, we determined that the cases do not conform to the theoretical model.

Recommended Citation

Chavarria, J., Flores, J., Mostafa, S., & Riedy, M. (2022). Who is ‘SLAPPing’ Whom?. Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology, 23(1). Retrieved from https://openspaces.unk.edu/mpjbt/vol23/iss1/1