Social Media & The Law: Twitter Creates New Rules for Privacy of UK Celebrities

“Is Twitter destroying celebrities’ privacy or eradicating censorship once and for all?

For the answer, we turn to the UK, which has been gripped with a #superinjunction craze this past week. In the UK, celebrities sometimes go to court to get “super injunctions,” otherwise known as gag orders, against tabloids intent on publishing private details like affairs with prostitutes. But now that individuals can be citizen-journalists via access to open communication channels like Twitter and Facebook, the idea that courts have the power to restrict information is under threat.

According to Experian Hitwise, a web measurement firm, one in every 200 UK web visits last week was to Twitter.com as citizens in the country attempted to solve which celebrities had been granted gag orders that protected the revelation of secret affairs.

The phenomenon started after a newspaper chain in the UK was subject to a super injunction that prevented a report about a married Premiership footballer who allegedly had an affair with Imogen Thomas, a former contestant on Big Brother. It also emerged that an actor had obtained a gag order preventing news he had an affair with a prostitute. There were two other super injunctions involving public figures granted, and soon, speculation turned to the involvement of Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson, rumored to be holding the lid on intimate pictures between him and a socialite. . .” THR, Esq. has the full story.