Publish at February 11 2026 Updated February 11 2026
Freedom of expression is often thought of as an individual right guaranteed by legal texts. However, in groups and collectives, it manifests itself less as a right than as a situated, fragile and conditional capacity.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's (1974) theory of the spiral of silence shows how fear of social isolation leads individuals to silence opinions perceived as minority. This dynamic, far from being limited to authoritarian regimes, runs through contemporary organizations, educational institutions and professional collectives. L
he issue at stake here is not just political, but profoundly pedagogical: how can we form collectives capable of sustaining critical discourse without exposing those who express it to dissuasive social costs?
Research into the sociology of opinion shows that the public expression of an idea depends less on its intrinsic validity than on its perceived social acceptability (Noelle-Neumann, 1993). The spiral of silence is not a mechanism of external censorship, but a process of social self-regulation: individuals constantly assess the climate of opinion and adjust their speech according to the anticipated risks.
In work groups and learning collectives, this dynamic is reinforced by diffuse power relationships: professional status, symbolic capital, recognized expertise or proximity to decision-making bodies (Crozier & Friedberg, 1977). Freedom of expression becomes asymmetrical: some can speak without consequences, while others take symbolic or professional risks.
Work on "psychological safety" (Edmondson, 1999; 2019) has shown thatthe possibility of expressing errors, doubts or disagreements is a key condition for collective learning. However, these approaches often remain functionalist: speech is encouraged insofar as it improves performance.
A blind spot remains: not all speech is equally desirable for the system. Some call into question the goals, implicit norms or ideological frameworks of the collective. This is precisely where freedom of expression comes up against its practical limits.
Facilitation is often presented as a set of techniques aimed at smoothing exchanges or reaching consensus. A rarer interpretation is to analyze it as an ecology of speech, i.e. work on the conditions of possibility of what can be said, heard and transformed into collective thought.
From this perspective, the facilitator is neither neutral nor external. He or she acts on the environment: time frames, implicit rules, speaking rhythms, legitimacy given to affects and bodily perceptions.
Inspired by Dewey's pragmatism (1938) and the phenomenology of lived experience (Vermersch, 2012), this approach considers that critical thinking often emerges from weak clues: a discomfort, a hesitation, a dissonance felt before being formulated conceptually.
A central issue, rarely addressed, concerns the symbolic violence that certain facilitation devices themselves can exert. By seeking to maintain a harmonious climate, they can neutralize legitimate conflicts or render undesirable any speech perceived as "negative" (Alter, 2012). Facilitation thus becomes a tool for social regulation rather than a space for emancipation.
Training for freedom of expression therefore implies working not only on rhetorical skills, but also on ordinary courage (Arendt, 1961): the ability to name a disagreement without guarantee of immediate recognition, and that of the collective to support this speech without reducing or sanctioning it.
The massive introduction of digital tools is profoundly transforming the conditions for collective discourse. Collaborative platforms, messaging systems and AI devices promise a democratization of expression, but simultaneously produce new regimes of silence.
Several studies show that digital traceability reinforces self-censorship: knowing that speech is recorded, archivable and potentially reusable modifies what is expressed (Cardon, 2019; Casilli, 2020). Speech becomes calculated, strategic and sometimes sanitized. The right to error and incompleteness, central to adult learning, is undermined.
Generative AI devices, capable of synthesizing or reformulating exchanges, pose an additional problem: who decides what makes the mark? The facilitator finds himself invested with an unprecedented ethical role: arbitrating between visibility and protection, between collective memory and respect for the zones of fragility necessary for the emergence of critical thought.
In this context, freedom of expression can no longer be thought of in isolation from critical digital literacy. Building collectives capable of remaining critical implies making explicit the effects of tools on speech, silences and power relationships. It's less a question of rejecting digital technology than of making it an object of shared reflection.
Freedom of expression in collectives cannot be decreed; it has to be cultivated. It depends on environments, practices and devices that make truth not just dictable, but habitable. Facilitation, when thought of as an ecology of speech rather than a consensus-building technique, can play a decisive role in this culture.
In the digital age, this role becomes even more demanding: it engages an ethical responsibility for what is made visible, preserved or kept secret. Training in freedom of expression means training to live lucidly with these tensions, without heroising transgression or silently submitting to security.
References
Alter, N. (2012). La force du désordre. Paris : PUF.
Arendt, H. (1961). Between past and future. New York : Viking Press.
Cardon, D. (2019). Culture numérique. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.
Casilli, A. (2020). Waiting for the robots. Paris : Seuil.
Crozier, M., & Friedberg, E. (1977). The actor and the system. Paris : Seuil.
Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The theory of inquiry. New York: Holt.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
Edmondson, A. (2019). The fearless organization. Hoboken: Wiley.
Noelle-Neumann, E. (1974). The spiral of silence. Journal of Communication, 24(2), 43-51.
Vermersch, P. (2012). L'entretien d'explicitation. Paris : ESF.
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