Reputation has become an increasingly significant and increasingly fragile proposition in the age of social media, with brands and individuals being "made" and "broken" in the click of a mouse. It's possible that you're reading a pdf of this article on your iPhone, Blackberry, or other smartphone, which tells the story of the seismic change in the way we communicate and form opinions in the 21st Century – in the mid-90s and the wake of the dot.com bubble bursting, it may have been easy to…

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Tweet And Be Damned - Will a Twitter user's attempt to "break" Superinjunctions lift the Social Media veil of secrecy?

In the latest twist to the ongoing and very public row over whether or not celebrities should be able to obtain so-called “Superinjunctions” to restrain the press from reporting on details of their private lives, a Twitter User has apparently posted details of the parties involved in six superinjunctions over the course of the weekend.



The…

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Welsh Councillor Colin Elsbury has been ordered to pay £3000 in damages and £50,000 in costs to a political rival in what is believed to be the first order in damages made by a UK Court over comments made on Twitter.



Elsbury's tweet came during a by-election in 2009 during which he stood for election to Caerphilly Town Council against the Claimant, Eddie Talbot – Elsbury claimed that Talbot had been removed from a Polling Station by Police during the Hustings and eventually went on… Read More

Much like the claimants who use it, defamation law in the UK has long been a target for intense criticism.



Our defamation law is notoriously 'claimant-friendly', to the point that anyone looking to bring a claim in the UK - whether an individual, business or other corporate body - does not have to prove that any actual harm to their reputation has taken place to be successful, reversing the 'burden of proof' to presume that harm to the claimant and leaving it to defendants to prove… Read More

Celebrity endorsement of a product or service is nothing new, but in the evolving world of social media, it's a brand new way for the rich and famous to make themselves and their commercial partners even richer



In the US, tweeting for sale is already an industry in itself, and it's a big business – reality TV Star Kim Kardashian and rapper Snoop Dogg are amongst Twitter's top celebrity earners, with Kardashian reportedly earning up to $10,000 for sending a single Tweet to endorse a… Read More

From 1 March 2011, the Advertising Standards Authority (the ASA) will regulate all advertisements online as well as in print and broadcast media including, for the first time, marketing messages on companies' own websites and on non-paid-for services under their control, including social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.



Online advertising is a big and growing business, increasingly influential given the sheer amount of time that we all spend on the web, the… Read More

In the latest twist in the long-running “phone-hacking” scandal involving several UK newspapers’ alleged attempts to intercept private voicemail messages of celebrities and other public figures, the News of the World has issued a rare admission of liability and apology.



News International’s dramatic statement comes after a long-running internal investigation and described “past behaviour” as “a matter of genuine regret”. The company is taking steps to set up a compensation scheme for… Read More

In the wake of the Government’s plans for the sweeping reform of libel law, the other side of high value celebrity litigation has come under the Media spotlight again this week after BBC reporter Andrew Marr was the most recent public figure to admit that he had obtained a “Superinjunction” in 2008 to protect his family’s privacy by suppressing reports of his affair with a fellow journalist.



Marr’s admission came in an interview with the Daily Mail, in which he said that he “did not… Read More