LAW8581 Social Media Regulation

• Offered for Year: 2025

• Module Leader(s): Dr Gethin Rees

• Owning School: Geography, Politics & Sociology
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

• Capacity limit: 999 student places

Semesters

Your programme is made up of

• Offered for Year: 2025

• Module Leader(s): Professor Ben Farrand

• Owning School: Newcastle Law School
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

• Capacity limit: 999 student places

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

Social Media Regulation is a module that deals with some of the most pressing, sensitive, and topical issues in Internet regulation at this point in time, namely how to combat the spread of information and media through social media in situations where there may be questions of the balance between freedom of expression and protection from harm. Dealing both with forms of content that are explicitly illegal, as well as those that are considered either borderline, or legal but immoral/amoral, Social Media Regulation proposes a theoretical framework for considering the different ways that these forms are regulated based on jurisdictional and socio-cultural variance, as well as with the strong politicization of platforms through the actions of actors such as Elon Musk. Engaging with different disciplinary perspectives on ‘harm’ in the context of online activity, and drawing from expertise developed in the context of an ongoing EPSRC funded project, ‘AGENCY’, and the EMIF funded ‘FAMOUS’, this module is informed by cutting-edge research on an area of law that is at the centre of current proposals for legal reform and political controversy.

NOTE: due to the nature of the issues that this module will cover, including topics such as self-harm, harassment, and intimate partner violence, the module carries a general content warning, as well as some session-specific warnings.

Outline Of Syllabus

The proposed outline of the syllabus is as follows, with the proviso that case studies will change each year dependent upon current issues, controversies, and developments:

1. Web 2.0: Social Media and the Information Society
2. Legal frameworks in comparative perspective: from self-regulation to public-private cooperation
3. The New Regulatory Landscape: ‘reclaiming cyberspace’ from the Online Safety Act to the Digital Services Act
4. Content I: combating intellectual property infringement online
5. Content II: combating sexual, racial, religious, and targeted abuse online*
6. Content III: combating extremism online*
7. Content IV: combating political disinformation online
8. Content V: Online influencers, advertising, and inauthentic behaviour*
9. The geopolitics of platform regulation
10. Conclusions
11. Legal frameworks in comparative perspective: applying Law 1.0 to Web 2.0?
12. Emerging approaches to regulation I: from self-regulation to public-private cooperation
13. Emerging approaches to regulation II: ‘reclaiming cyberspace’ from the Online Safety Bill to the Digital Markets Act
14. Content I: combating intellectual property infringement online
15. Content II: combating sexual, racial, religious, and targeted abuse online*
16. Content III: combating extremism online*
17. Content IV: combating disinformation online
18. R U TRIGGERED? Offensive content, self-harm promotion, and other legal but immoral content*
19. Drawing together the threats: the regulation of social activity in the Information Society

*Sessions marked with an asterisk have specific content warnings in addition to the general module-level warning.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

At the end of the module, students should be able to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of:

1. The concepts of law, regulation, formal and informal governance
2. The interactions between norms, laws, and culture in both the dissemination and combating of offensive content
3. The application of existing and proposed legal regimes to a range of different forms of online content, ranging from intellectual property infringement to the promotion of self-harm
4. The complexities in regulating social media content, both technologically and socially, and the balancing of freedom of expression with other obligations

Intended Skills Outcomes

At the end of the module, students should be able to demonstrate:

1. Cognitive skills – the ability to interpret and apply theories and concepts from regulation and governance
2. The ability to interpret, analyse, and apply laws to different forms of content dissemination
3. The ability to critically reflect on the nature of ‘harm’ in the online environment and as determined by proposed regulatory interventions
4. The ability to develop a position on the regulation of complex ‘speech’ issues in the online environment
5. The ability to analyse and synthesise arguments from a range of materials and disciplinary perspectives relevant to content moderation
6. Key transferable skills – the ability to think about problems from an interdisciplinary perspective, demonstrate critical reasoning skills, and collect, handle, evaluate, and apply information
7. Oral and written presentation skills, through active participation in workshops and preparation of written tasks
8. The ability to carry out independent research and identify relevant primary and secondary legal materials, as well as non-legal materials of relevance to the subject of study

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Assessment Methods

Exams

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The first assessment component for this module is an open-book, Canvas-facilitated MCQ that should take students approximately an hour to complete. Students will be expected to answer a number of questions that test both substantive, factual knowledge of the law, as well as their ability to interpret and apply those laws to a number of scenarios. These questions will be graded and feedback provided on each individual question, allowing for students to identify areas of their own understanding that require improvement. This will help to reinforce topics covered in class, allowing for students to then engage in the writing of their policy brief, which is the second assessment for this module. General feedback for the assignment will also be provided in class, in order to show the links to the final assessment.

The second assessment for the module is provided in the form of a 2,500-word policy brief. Set at the beginning of the semester and drawing from the content of the first four weeks of the module content, this activity allows students to develop experience using different writing styles to communicate with different audiences, as well as allowing for students to be assessed on their understanding of the decisions regulators must make in determining how to regulate the dissemination of offensive content online (and indeed, whether to regulate at all).

credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

The module aims to give students an understanding of interdisciplinary methods and how they can be used to study international security. This will provide students with a foundation for critically engaging with the disciplines within the programme – Law, Sociology, Politics, and Geography. It will be especially useful for their dissertations.

Outline Of Syllabus

Indicative course content will cover:

• The concept of interdisciplinarity and how to conceptualise security from an interdisciplinary perspective
• Understanding the philosophical, methodological, and disciplinary intersections across the programme disciplines
• How to study the social complexity and reality of security across disciplines
• How to design research questions
• Ethics and reflexivity in research
• How to source materials
• Applying methods within and outside academia, including the public and private sectors
• Translating research and security ideas into a viable postgraduate dissertation

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

Upon completion of the module, students will develop a comprehensive critical understanding of:

1. Security from different disciplinary perspectives
2. Applying an interdisciplinary security approach to different scenarios
3. The philosophical foundations of different methods and disciplinary practices
4. Ethical issues and guidelines in social research

Intended Skills Outcomes

Upon completion of the module, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate skills in close reading, critical thinking, and analysis
2. Achieve independence in their learning
3. Express complex ideas clearly, both verbally and in writing

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Assessment Methods

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The submitted research proposal will enable students to demonstrate their understanding of how international security can be studied from an interdisciplinary perspective. It will also enable them to showcase their critical thinking and academic writing skills.