UWA Handbook 2024

Unit Overview

Description

More than a billion people, businesses, governments and other entities currently use social media. Judicial officers, courts, lawyers and other individuals in the legal system also use social media. However, the law generally struggles to keep up with making changes that are necessary or beneficial due to social media's existence. For example, most Australian courts only developed policies/Australian governments only passed legislation concerning whether journalists can use social media in courtrooms about seven years after social media was created and years after millions of Australians started to use it. This unit gives students an understanding of many of the key legal and ethical issues that social media raises for the law.

In this unit, students learn about some of the areas in which social media plays a significant role in the law.

Four main themes of this unit are: (a) social media poses many challenges and benefits for the legal system and there are many more yet to come; (b) Australian law is slow to adapt to social media; (c) in some instances social media creates new situations that the legal system has yet to experience before and in some instances social media may simply be a contemporary take on a long-standing issue; it can be contentious which situation is which; and (d) it can be challenging to decide whether new ethical guidelines are necessary that apply to social media or whether existing ethical guidelines are sufficient to apply to social media (e.g. ethical guidelines for the judiciary and for lawyers).

Credit

6 points

Offering
(see Timetable)

Availability	Location	Mode
Semester 1	UWA (Perth)	Face to face

Details for undergraduate courses

• Level 3 option in the Law and Society major sequence
• Level 3 elective

Outcomes

Students are able to (1) demonstrate an understanding of what social media are and the main social media that Australians use; (2) explain who are the key legal stakeholders affected by social media and the challenges and opportunities that they face; (3) describe how social media impacts upon established areas of law, including defamation, criminal law, employment law and evidence; and (4) compare and contrast the approach that courts in different common law systems have taken regarding social media and the law.

Assessment

Indicative assessments in this unit are as follows: (1) tutorial participation; (2) assignment; and (3) final assessment. Further information is available in the unit outline.

Student may be offered supplementary assessment in this unit if they meet the eligibility criteria.

Unit Coordinator(s)

Dr Marilyn Bromberg

Unit rules

Prerequisites

For Law and Society major students: LAWS1111 Law, Conflict and Change
or LAWS1112 Adulting: Law for Everyday Lives
and LAWS2227 Law in Action.
All other students: completion of 48 points of study.

Advisable prior study

LAWS1104 Introduction to Law.
LAWS1120 Australian Legal Principles and Institutions, LAWS1111 Law, Conflict and Change
or LAWS1112 Adulting: Law for Everyday Lives
or LAWS2227 Law in Action.
Students who have not completed any advisable prior study will be required to undertake a legal research skills workshop and other seminars and learning modules at the discretion of the Unit Coordinator.

Contact hours

3 hours per week

Texts

A full reading list for the tutorials each week is provided on LMS. Since the unit is very contemporary and experiences changes all the time, there is no appropriate book for the unit. Instead, there are relevant articles, policy documents and internet pages that comprise the readings for the unit.

Some of the articles and policy documents that students will read in the unit are:

Marilyn Bromberg and Andrew Ekert, ‘Caution: Tweet at Your Own Risk - Social Media and the Australian Legal Profession’ (2018) 7 Journal of Civil Litigation and Practice 183.

Marilyn Bromberg-Krawitz, Issues Paper for a Symposium: Challenges of Social Media for Courts & Tribunals (May 2016). Additional books, articles, websites, etc., are also included. These additional texts will be made available electronically where possible.

Tasmania Law Reform Institute, Jurors, Social Media and the Right of an Accused to a Fair Trial (Final Report, January 2020). 

Raymond Surette, ‘Performance Crime and Justice (2015) 27(2) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 195.