Editorial

In this special issue, we present five original peer-reviewed articles, which examine a range of interesting and current legal issues surrounding social media. The issue showcases research in regulation and activism, public law vs. social media, privacy and identification, as well as copyright infringement on social media. This is a very timely special edition. After an already long and strenuous battle with regulators across the world over fake news, takedown policies and the tracking of browsing-behaviour, social media took a sledgehammer blow in March 2018. The joint efforts of the Guardian and Channel 4 laid bare how Facebook’s data policies resulted in massive amounts of user data effectively ending up in the hands of devious ‘political consultants’ such as Cambridge Analytica. Even if the scandal is unlikely to be Facebook’s coup de grâce, it certainly seems to have brought about a watershed moment in social media scepticism. Investigatory ‘data-journalism’ is on the rise, and with it is a growing awareness among the broader public about the tech sector’s shady underbelly. This growing momentum will hopefully lead to answers to some of the core questions policy-makers and academics have been struggling with for many years now already. These questions relate to, for instance, the regulation of content on online platforms and intermediaries, users privacy and data protection, accountability and transparency of platforms and governments, freedom of speech and autonomy of users, and the wider development of digital economy. Social media players constitute the nodes where these issues come together and therefore offer a great focal point to investigate and try to frame solutions. We believe that the contributions in this special issue will help elucidate some aspects of these questions and can inform the debate, policy and laws with well-presented and original research. The first article, written by Celeste, investigates constitutional questions in the realm of social media, and how to deal with fundamental rights in relation to such global power actors. Fundamental human rights have traditionally been questions of a rather state-centric, public law nature. Yet today, these questions increasingly play out in the context of private actors, not in the least powerful social media operators transcending national borders. Celeste explores innovative solutions, such as the constitutionalisation of social media’s terms of service and bills of rights of social media users. To what extent can these documents replace or complement existing constitutional instruments? Many of these documents at least seem to aspire to do so. According to the author, this aspiration can be explained by a desire for reconfiguring the constitutional equilibrium, which has been upset by these powerful tech players in the first place. Eventually, Celeste concludes that even though there might be some theoretical justification for constitutionalisation in social media, significant drawbacks remain. He explains how future constitutionalisation initiatives – either coming from private actors or the state – should be closely monitored and analysed. In the end, it might well be that a ‘multilevel’ type of constitutional governance will be the middle way for ensuring the effective protection of fundamental rights in the social media environment. Dempsey Willis’ article looks at democratic processes and explores the effectiveness of international social media (Twitter) campaigns and the associated phenomenon of Advocacy 2.0. In her analysis, the author critiques current thought on social media as an advocacy tool using evidence from two Iranian campaigns, namely, #stopstoning and #letwomengotostadium. The author finds evidence that these Twitter campaigns paradoxically have led to a regression