Blocking Social Media. Reasoning and Legal Grounds

Abstract

Use of social media represents now a global trend that also contaminates the sphere of public administration and other governmental activities. Despite so wide use and popularity of social media among individuals, business and social institutes, they become more and more subject for censorship and blocking with different reasoning and outreach. Recent incidents all over the world show an emerging tendency to restrict social media use by companies, employers and the governments. It is worth noting, that not only China or North Korea which are traditionally famous for their restrictive policies towards Internet activities are spotted for blocking social media but a large part of African countries and even countries rather close to Europe, e.g. Turkey, Ukraine, Russia. The authors are seeking to provide a brief review of reasoning and legal grounds for social media blocking used by the governments.