"Foreword" [2017] ELECD 859; in Mangan, David; Gillies, E. Lorna (eds), "The Legal Challenges of Social Media" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) ix

Book Title: The Legal Challenges of Social Media

Editor(s): Mangan, David; Gillies, E. Lorna

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781785364501

Section Title: Foreword

Number of pages: 3

Extract:

Foreword
Sir Edward Garnier QC

This book, which makes an important contribution to the understanding
of a complex and fast-moving area of law, is the fruit of a collaboration
of researchers led by Dr Lorna Gillies and Dr David Mangan, at
Leicester University's School of Law in December 2013. During the
course of a day they and the other eminent academics whose chapters
make up this book discussed an area of law that touches on politics, the
media in all its forms, academic and philosophical study of the law, and
the policy behind the formation, reform and practice of modern media
law, as well as the lives of the rich and famous and the general public
throughout the world who use, consume, enjoy and despise social media
to varying degrees.
As the Member of Parliament for Harborough, a Leicestershire con-
stituency which is the home for many of Leicester University's students
and academics, if not the campus itself, and as a media law practitioner
at the Bar since the mid-1970s, I was delighted to be asked to take part in
the collaboration but my contribution was slight compared to the chapters
that form this book. It is said in this book, and it has been said before,
that the principles that govern the law relating to defamation or social
media now are pretty much the same as they have always been; what
changes is the application of those principles to developing technologies
and publication platforms. For ...