Kathmandu School of Law Review

P-ISSN : 2091-2110, E-ISSN : 2773-8159, DOI : 10.46985, Publisher : Kathmandu School of Law, Nepal
Annual flagship journal of Kathmandu School of Law, Nepal

Volume 4, Issue 1, 2014
Articles

‘Freedom’ and ‘Social Responsibility’ of Social Media: Emerging Issues in the Indian Legal System

PDF
  • Deeksha Bajpai Tewari
    ,
  • Upma Gautam
Deeksha Bajpai Tewari
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi, Delhi
Bio
Upma Gautam
Assistant Professor, USLLS, GGSIPU, Dwarka, New Delhi
Bio

Published 2014-04-30

How to Cite

Tewari, D. B., & Gautam, U. . (2014). ‘Freedom’ and ‘Social Responsibility’ of Social Media: Emerging Issues in the Indian Legal System. Kathmandu School of Law Review, 4(1), 35–57. Retrieved from https://kslreview.org/index.php/kslr/article/view/187

Abstract

The paper seeks to highlight the performance of social responsibility as regards the online social sites. The role of social networking sites as a replacement to the erstwhile ‘open access’ platforms of deliberations will also be addressed. This paper also analyses various laws regulating the freedom of speech and expression in this open, wide cyberspace. It advocates the need for redefining the basic concepts of ethics, morality, freedom, liberty, and responsibility, which form the basis of legal framework regulating this large contiguous cyberspace.

PDF

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

  1. Thomas L. Friedman, ‘Where freedom Reigns’, New York Times, 14 August 2002.
  2. Thomas L. Friedman cited in Doris Sommer, Bilingual Aesthetics: A new sentimental Education, Duke University Press, 2004, p. 227.
  3. Majid Behrouzi (ed.), Democracy as the political empowerment of the people: The betrayal of an ideal, Lexington Books, 2006.
  4. The term ‘demos’ in ancient Athens usually referred to the entire ...people and sometimes...only (to) the common people or even just the poor; Ibid.
  5. Democracy in some of its forms has been known and practiced in India throughout the ages. Records of Hindu literature – Vedic, classical and prakrit,have shown that popular assemblies and institutions existed in ancient India and exercised legislative, judicial and administrative functions. Republican form of government existed in the country of the Buddha, and even under the regime of Mauryans, and continued to flourish. It became extinct only when the imperial power of the Hindus began to disintegrate. Spirit of democracy is not utterly alien to Hindus who form the majority of population in India. Democracy, however, in its modern western form has been introduced in India by the British. It is true that self-government has been granted to India slowly and in small measures, but now after years of political struggle India has come to enjoy quite an adequate measure of self rule. All the various installments of reforms in India have made the people democratically minded and have introduced them to the methods and procedures of democratic government; See Diwan Chand Sharma, ‘Education for democracy in India’ in C. Roberts(ed.), What India thinks,Asian educational Services, New Delhi, 2004, pp. 126-132.
  6. Article 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948, provides-‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’.
  7. Report ofthe Second Press Comm, vol.1, pp. 34-35.
  8. Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rightsstates that ‘Every one shall have the right to hold opinions without interference. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of [their] choice.’ 9. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, Supreme Court, India, AIR 1978 SC 597; (1978)1 SCC 248; Louis Brandeis J. has made a classic statement on the freedom of speech in the context of the US. Constitution saying, ‘Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties...They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that the freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think is means indispensible to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile...that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American Government.’ Whitney v. California , SupremeCourt, the US, 247 US 214.
  9. The First Amendment to the US Constitution codifies the freedom of speech as a constitutional right. The Amendment was adopted on 15 December 1791. The Amendment states, ’Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances’. Although the text of the Amendment prohibits only the US Congressfrom enacting laws that abridge the freedom of speech, the Supreme Court has used theIncorporation DoctrineinGitlow v. New York(1925) to also prohibitstate legislaturesfrom enacting such laws; See M.P. Jain, Indian Constitutional Law, Wadhwa and Co., Nagpur, 1986, p. 1153.
  10. U.S Constitution has two notable features, viz, 1) freedom of press is specifically mentioned therein; 2) No restrictions are mentioned on the freedom of speech unlike article 19(2) of the Indian Constitution, which spells out the restrictions on article 19(1). Therefore, the Courts in the US have to spell out the restrictions on this right from case to case; See Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting v. Cricket Association, Bengal, Supreme Court, India, AIR 1995 SC 1236.
  11. Sakal Papers v. Union of India, Supreme Court, India, AIR 1962 SC 305.
  12. Brij Bhushan v. Delhi, Supreme Court, India, AIR 1950 SC 129; Romesh Thapar v. State of Madras, Supreme Court, India, AIR 1950 SC 124;Virendra v. State of Punjab,Supreme Court, India,AIR 1957 SC 896; Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India,Supreme Court, India, AIR 1986 SC 515; Reliance Petrochemicals Ltd. v. Indian Express, Supreme Court, India, AIR 1989 SC 190; Printers(Mysore) Ltd v. Assistant Commercial Tax Officer, Supreme Court, India, (1994)2 SCC 434; State v. Charulata Joshi, Supreme Court, India, AIR 1999SC 1379.
  13. R.J. Johnston, et al. (eds), The Dictionary of Human Geography, 4thedn, Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
  14. The idea that the social context of inquiry, rather than the world which is investigated, determines –constructs, is knowledge. Knowledge, therefore, is always relative to its social setting (there are no absolutes), and the outcome of an active process of fabrication, rather than the discovery of a reality pre-existent.
  15. ‘Space’ as it is perceived and used by social groups. The term was introduced by Buttimer in the year 1969.
  16. RL Gangl A Fox, ‘News You Cant Use-Politics and Democracy in the New Media Environment’ in Le Cheminant (ed.): Manipulating Democracy-Democratic Theory, Political Psychology, and Mass Media, Routledge, 2011.
  17. William Davidow, Overconnected -The Promise and Threat of the Internet, Delphinium, 2011.
  18. Conversation: No longer is the communication one-way, broadcast or somehow sent to a passive audience. Social media is at least a two-way conversation, and often a multidimensional conversation. Contribution: Social media encourages contributions and reactions from anyone who is interested. ‘Encourage’ is the key here; social media solicits an interaction, positive and negative, by making it easy to contribute. Collaboration: Social media promotes an exchangeof information between you and your audience, and among audience members, by inviting participation. Connection:Accessing information on the Internet only takes a click. Social media thrives on connections, within its own Web vehicles and through links to other sites, resources, people, and automatic feeds. Community:The fundamental characteristic of social media is the creation of community: a fellowship and relationship with others who share common attitudes, interests, and goals (such as friendship, professionalism, and politics) Communities form quickly and communicate effectively. While these communities are only virtual, with members seldom meeting each other in person, they are no less robust than the physical communities in which we live, and in many ways more robust from the simple fact that barriers are removed.
  19. Sanastokeskus TSK, Sosiaalisen median sanasto, Helsinki, 2010.
  20. Eysenbach, 2.0: Social Networking, Collaboration, Participation, Apomediation, and Openness’, vol 10, no. 3, Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2008, p. 22.
  21. Axel Bruns, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage, Peter Lang, New York, 2008.
  22. P.I. Hajnal (ed.), Civil society in the information age, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002.
  23. P Gundelach, ‘Social transformation and new forms of voluntary associations’, vol. 23, Social Science Information, 1984, pp. 1049–1081.
  24. R. O’Brien et al., Contesting global governance. Multilateral economic institutions and global social movements, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000.
  25. S. Tarrow, Power in movement—social movements and contentious politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.
  26. C. Shirky, ‘The political Power of Social Media’, vol. 1, no. 1, Foreign Affairs28, 2011, pp. 28-41.
  27. T. Friedman, The World Is Flat 3.0: A brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Picador, 2007.
  28. R Harfous, Yes We Did -An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand, new Riders 2009 and Pew Internet. The Internetś Role in Campaign 2008, Pew Internet and American Life Project, April 2009.
  29. ‘Soft power’, as defined by Nye, is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies.
  30. Mahesh Murthy, founder of Pinstorm, a digital marketing group that works with large companies and leading political parties.
  31. Clay Shirky, ‘The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change’, vol. 90, no. 1, Foreign Affairs, 2011, pp. 28-I.
  32. Henry A. Giroux, ‘The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media: Rethinking the Politics of Representation’, Fast Capitalism 5.2, 2009.
  33. Christian Christensen, ‘Discourses of Technology and Liberation: State Aid to Net Activists in an Era of Twitter Revolutions’, vol. 14, no. 3, Communication Review, 2011, pp. 233-253.
  34. Malcolm Gladwell, ‘Small Change’, The New Yorker, 4 October 2010.
  35. Although the Information Technology Actwas in force since 2000, India did not police the cyber space with much vigour before the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai. After the attacks, the Information Technology Act,2000 was amended to expand and strengthen the monitoring and censoring capacity of the government. The Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008, was passed in an eventful parliamentary session on 23rd of December 2008 with no discussion in the House.
  36. The provision reads: Punishment for sending offensive messages through communications ervice, etc.- Any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device—(a) any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; or(b) any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult,injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will, persistently by making use of such computer resource or a communication device; (c) anyelectronic mailor electronic mail message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and with fine.
  37. Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, India, WP (Cri) no. 167 of 2012.
  38. Rajeev Chandrashekhar v. Union of India,India, W P (C) no. 23 of 2013.
  39. The Supreme Court of India has decided to bunch together all petitions related to the regulation of free speech online. Parties who have filed petitions include Shreya Singhal, Mouthshut.com, Dilipkumar Tulsidas, Common Cause and Rajeev Chandrashekhar.
  40. Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, ‘Advisory on Implementation of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000’, 9 January 2013 available at http://meghpol.nic.in/notification/Advisoryonsection_66A.pdf, accessed on 12 March 2014.