Social media is a brave new world of free speech according to its proponents. It’s an indeterminate location online that is open, borderless and free from the shackles of editorial control where activists are able to communicate freely.

But what happens when the conventions of a social network don’t provide an adequate mechanism for response or retribution? Individuals and organisations need a mechanism to protect their reputation. And that’s still the law.

Media is media, defamation is defamation

Social media is not beyond the reach of copyright, defamation or privacy laws according to media litigator Gideon Benaim, partner, Schillings Lawyers speaking at the CIPR Reputation Management conference in Manchester last month.

“The law of defamation applies equally online as well as offline, whatever the legal jurisdiction. It’s a falsehood to believe otherwise,” said Mr Benaim who represents corporate organisations and high net worth individual, both pre- and post-publication.

Conventional wisdom says that it is not possible for media law to hold-up online and cite the recent Trafigura case from October 2009.

Trafigura obtained an injunction to prevent an MP from tabling a question about the company in Parliament. Contrary to popular opinion the injunction was overturned following an appeal by lawyers from the Guardian newspaper – and not the debate on Twitter, although this inevitably helped.

Injunctions are the standard tool in the armoury of a legal team seeking to block the publication of a story that threatens reputation and by their very nature you don’t get to hear about the ones that aren’t challenged.

Injunctions against ISPs as publishers

Mr Benaim cited cases where injunctions had been served on multiple ISPs as a defensive strategy to avoid the publication of sensitive corporate material and cautioned that rapid response was crucial.

“It is important that corporate organisations have a plan for dealing with attacks on their reputation. That includes the numbers of people to call on Friday night at 7pm or Sunday morning at 10am,” he said.

Mr Benaim demonstrated how news stories used to propagate via traditional media and the role which online and social media now plays in extending the life of a story.

“A story used to break without warning and then die away relatively quickly. Now thanks to social media stories bubble frequently under for a time and if they can be dealt with before the tipping point often a crisis can be averted. When a story does break social media typically extends its lifecycle far beyond traditional means,” he said.

Mr Benaim encouraged PR consultancies and corporate communication teams to work in conjunction with media lawyers in the case of a breach of media law.

PR teams are typically reluctant to pursue a legal route against a publisher because of the perceived impact to their media relationships. But legal conversations take place lawyer-to-lawyer so this is not the case he said.

Stephen Waddington (@wadds) is the managing director of multi-sector PR agency Speed.