Social media has added a whole new dimension to the challenges of determining the meaning of words, says Athelstane Aamodt
- The social media user represents a new class of ‘ordinary reader’ to consider when determining the true meaning of statements.
- Should social media companies be subject to regulation enforcing a legal duty of care on them with respect to their users?
Much of the practice of law is about determining the meanings of words. In some cases, for example, the focus will be on what a law is meant to mean, and in others the focus will be on what agreements made between parties are meant to mean. The area of law that is concerned perhaps more than any other about what words mean is defamation. The reason for this is obvious: for a statement to be capable of being defamatory, a court must first determine what the words actually mean.
Taking stock
The process of how courts decide what a statement means was the focus of the recent Supreme Court decision in Stocker v Stocker [2019] UKSC
