People You Might Know: Social Media in the Conflict Between Law and Democracy

Abstract

Twitter and other blogs, Facebook, emails, SMS messages, LinkedIn, Youtube and Flickr are ubiquitous forms of communication within modern society. The role of these tools in enabling individuals to express their political opinions, as well as whether and how social media should be regulated, have emerged as questions of considerable interest. However, the issue of locating social media within a possible conflict between regulation and democracy remains underexplored. Law is just one of the forces or ‘regulators’ that control and define systems such as the internet, the others being markets, architectures and norms.² Civil or political liberties within cyberspace will