Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat allow users to connect with one another and share information with the click of a mouse or a tap on a touchscreen—and have become vital tools for professionals in the news and strategic communication fields. But as rapidly as these services have grown in popularity, their legal ramifications aren’t widely understood. To what extent do communicators put themselves at risk for defamation and privacy lawsuits when they use these tools, and what rights do communicators have when other users talk about them on social networks? How can an entity maintain control of intellectual property issues—such as posting copyrighted videos and photographs—consistent with the developing law in this area? How and when can journalists and publicists use these tools to do their jobs without endangering their employers or clients? Including two new chapters that examine First Amendment issues and ownership of social media accounts and content, Social Media and the Law brings together thirteen media law scholars to address these questions and more, including current issues like copyright, online impersonation, anonymity, cyberbullying, sexting, and live streaming. Students and professional communicators alike need to be aware of laws relating to defamation, privacy, intellectual property, and government regulation—and this guidebook is here to help them navigate the tricky legal terrain of social media.

Social media enables instant access to individual self-expression and the sharing of information. Social media issues are boundless, permeating distinct legal disciplines. The law has struggled to adapt and for good reason: how does the law regulate this medium over the public/private law divide? This book engages with the legal implications of social media from public and private law perspectives and outlines how the law, in various legal sub-disciplines and with varying success, has endeavoured to adapt existing tools to social media.

Social Media and Electronic Commerce Law investigates the challenges facing legal practitioners and commercial parties in this dynamic field.

In the last few years, social media has become the primary way of communicating, not only among friends and colleagues but also between employers and employees and between companies and consumers. For employers, the phenomenon offers great opportunities, but also concomitant dangers due primarily to use of social media by employees and employees' representatives. Written in the context of employment laws as well as privacy laws, this book surveys the state of the law in over thirty key jurisdictions, including most of the developed countries of Europe, Asia, and North America and major developing countries worldwide. The publication arose from a seminar prepared by the editors and others at which it was clearly identified that internationally operating employers need a comprehensive and user-friendly multinational summary on employment and labour law questions arising in connection with the use of social media. The book is divided into country chapters, each written by a known local specialist. In order to easily 'navigate' through the issues for each country, the chapters follow a uniform structure, covering the applicable statutory regimes, case law, useful checklists, and recommendations. Among the issues and topics dealt with are the following: - employees' entitlement to use social media at the workplace; - whether employers can require the use of social media by employees; - right of employers to monitor employees' use of social media outside the workplace; - employers' potential liability for employees' misuse of social media; - right of employee representatives to use employers' equipment for social media purposes; - employers' remedies against misuse of social media by employees and employee representatives; - development and drafting of a social media policy; and - role of social media in employer–employee disputes. No other publication exists providing interested parties with a practical and strategic guide to legal issues affecting the use of social media in the workplace. With its easy-to-use country-by-country format and its expert recommendations, this unique resource will prove itself as an incomparable handbook for lawyers, human resources professionals, and in-house counsel advising or working for internationally operating businesses. It will also be of inestimable value for academics and policymakers concerned with the legal ramifications of social media use in the workplace.

How are users influenced by social media platforms when they generate content, and does this influence affect users’ compliance with copyright laws? These are pressing questions in today’s internet age, and Regulating Content on Social Media answers them by analysing how the behaviours of social media users are regulated from a copyright perspective. Corinne Tan, an internet governance specialist, compares copyright laws on selected social media platforms, namely Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter and Wikipedia, with other regulatory factors such as the terms of service and the technological features of each platform. This comparison enables her to explore how each platform affects the role copyright laws play in securing compliance from their users. Through a case study detailing the content generative activities undertaken by a hypothetical user named Jane Doe, as well as drawing from empirical studies, the book argues that – in spite of copyright’s purported regulation of certain behaviours – users are 'nudged' by the social media platforms themselves to behave in ways that may be inconsistent with copyright laws. Praise for Regulating Content on Social Media 'This book makes an important contribution to the field of social media and copyright. It tackles the real issue of how social media is designed to encourage users to engage in generative practices, in a sense effectively “seducing” users into practices that involve misuse or infringement of copyright, whilst simultaneously normalising such practices.’ Melissa de Zwart, Dean of Law, Adelaide Law School, Australia "This timely and accessible book examines the regulation of content generative activities across five popular social media platforms – Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter and Wikipedia. Its in-depth, critical and comparative analysis of the platforms' growing efforts to align terms of service and technological features with copyright law should be of great interest to anyone studying the interplay of law and new media." Peter K. Yu, Director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property, Texas A&M University