[Air-L] Including screennames with tweets

paula todd paulatoddmedia at gmail.com
Fri Jul 13 10:45:38 PDT 2018


Hi, a few thoughts ...  Screen names are often creations/public projections
and forms of agency, important/expressive in their own way. Signature
selections are integral to the full social media message. Exclusion, then,
is a form of censorship. If you choose to exclude, you will have to explain
why. If the only reason is because someone who uses social media may not
understand that their content is public and can therefore (legally) be
reproduced or re-mediated on any platform, the same logic could apply to
reproducing public content of any type. Very risky. The only cases I could
justify such editorializing (selecting which parts of a communication to
share) parallel general defamation and hate speech limitations. Social
media is public, and of the public sphere; those who want to create
private/privileged communication use peer-to-peer, offline, direct
messaging, telephone *et al.*

Paula


*Paula Todd*
B.A., LLB.(J.D.), PhD Can. (Digital Journalism)
York & Ryerson Universities
Toronto, Canada


On Fri, Jul 13, 2018 at 2:23 AM, Hayes, Rebecca M <hayes2r at cmich.edu> wrote:

> Dear All,
> Can you please weigh in on the decision to include or not include
> screennames
> when we cite tweets in a book? The book is on new media and crime,
> and we are using tweets in a few places as examples of some different
> discussions.
>
> We are back and forth on whether we should include the screennames and at
> others or disclude them. The arguments we have seen thus far, are to
> include them because it was made public and we are citing someones words.
> The other argument is to disclude them
> as the person did not consent to have it printed in that way persay, and
> the screenname attached in our book could be used to find and harass the
> person. What are your thoughts?
>
> Thank you,
> Becky
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