If, like me, you stayed up late recently to watch the general election results come in, you’ll have been bombarded with a dizzying array of numbers. From exit poles immediately after voting closed, to the live feed of results through the night; statistics will be everywhere. Spare a thought for the vote counters, each one of whom are the living embodiment of democracy in action!
But away from the election results themselves, one statistic particularly struck me that general election campaign. A YouGov survey published earlier in the month provided data on the most common sources of news during the election.
The survey revealed that the most popular medium is still TV with 58%. However, demonstrating the ever-digitised world in which we live, in second place, with 43%, was social media. And perhaps most striking was that 72% of the survey participants aged 18-24 said that they used social media to access news. In comparison, only 19% of those aged 65+ used social media for news.
The YouGov survey shows that social media is here to stay and with it comes great opportunities to engage with everyone, from friends and family to prospective employers and customers. But with that opportunity comes risk and those risks can have legal consequences as well as reputational ones.
As the World Economic Forum said, your most valuable asset is your reputation. A critical or embarrassing post on social media can be screen grabbed, it can be shared, and it can be forwarded instantly. Even if the original message is deleted, the legacy is a permanent digital footprint.
A single post on social media can create vast legality liabilities, including libel, misuse of private information, data protection breaches, harassment, contempt, breaching company confidentiality, and infringing on intellectual property rights. In Northern Ireland, relevant legislation includes the Defamation Act 2022, the Protection from Harassment (NI) Order 1997 and the Data Protection Act 2018 for example.
This increasingly digital world we live in also poses significant challenges for governments both here and across the world to regulate the internet. One of the most recent pieces of legislation to be enacted by the last UK government was the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA), which applies in Northern Ireland.
The OSA primary aim is to protect children and adults online. It will also place new duties on social media companies and search engines, placing greater responsibility on them to manage the safety of their users. Ofcom will be the new regulator of online safety with their duties to begin from early 2025.
A new political landscape is emerging. Our newly-elected political representatives, as evidenced by the YouGov survey, will face an increasingly digitised world, which looks to accelerate at pace through advances in emerging technologies such artificial intelligence (AI).
A commitment to enforcing existing legislation such as the OSA and identifying and acting upon new legal risks will be crucial to ensure we harness the opportunities these new technologies bring whilst maximising the safety of all users.
For individuals or companies, such risks and liabilities can be managed with clear and effective strategies. And of course, seeking legal advice in advance before something goes wrong is preferable to receiving a legal complaint. I vote for that!
- Olivia O’Kane is partner and head of technology, media, cyber & data privacy disputes and public law in Northern Ireland & RoI for DWF Law
