Abstract
Use of social media represents now a global trend that also contaminates the sphere of public administration and other governmental activities. Despite so wide use and popularity of social media among individuals, business and social institutes, they become more and more subject for censorship and blocking with different reasoning and outreach. Recent incidents all over the world show an emerging tendency to restrict social media use by companies, employers and the governments. It is worth noting, that not only China or North Korea which are traditionally famous for their restrictive policies towards Internet activities are spotted for blocking social media but a large part of African countries and even countries rather close to Europe, e.g. Turkey, Ukraine, Russia. The authors are seeking to provide a brief review of reasoning and legal grounds for social media blocking used by the governments.
References
Bekkers, V., Edwards, A., De Kool, D.: Social media monitoring: responsive governance in the shadow of surveillance? Gov. Inf. Q. 30(4), 335–342 (2013). doi:10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.024
Bertot, J.C., Jaeger, P.T., Hansen, D.: The impact of polices on government social media usage: Issues, challenges, and recommendations. Gov. Inf. Q. 29(1), 30–40 (2012). doi:10.1016/j.giq.2011.04.004
Bonson, E., Torres, L., Royo, S., Flores, F.: Local e-government 2.0: social media and corporate transparency in municipalities. Gov. Inf. Q. 29(2), 123–132 (2012). doi:10.1016/j.giq.2011.10.001
Castells, M.: The new public sphere: global civil society, communication networks, and global governance. Ann. Acad. Polit. Soc. Sci. 616(1), 78–93 (2008)
Danish Ministry Releases Plan to Block Online Propaganda of Terrorism (2017). https://sputniknews.com/europe/201701121049539296-denmark-government-online-propaganda/
DeNardis, L., Hackl, A.M.: Internet governance by social media platforms. Telecommun. Policy 39(9), 761–770 (2015). doi:10.1016/j.telpol.2015.04.003
Dimov, D.: Restricting social media at work (2013). http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/restricting-social-media-at-work/
Dumas, C.D., Atrey, A., Lee, J., Harrison, T.M., Fake, T., Zhao, X., Ravi, S.S.: E-petition information diffusion in online social networks. In: Proceedings of 17th International Digital Government Research Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2016), pp. 515–517. ACM, New York (2016). doi:10.1145/2912160.2912227
E-Petitions of UK Government and Parliament. https://petition.parliament.uk/
Feng, G.C., Guo, S.Z.: Tracing the route of China’s internet censorship: an empirical study. Telemat. Inform. 30(4), 335–345 (2013). doi:10.1016/j.tele.2012.09.002
Hong, H.: Government websites and social media’s influence on government-public relationships. Publ. Relat. Rev. 39(4), 346–356 (2013)
Hrdinová, J., Helbig, N., Peters, C.S.: Designing social media policy for government: eight essential elements (2010). https://www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/guides/social_media_policy/social_media_policy.pdf
Imani Giglou, R., d’Haenens, L., Ogan, C.: Turkish diasporic responses to the Taksim square protests: legacy media and social media uses in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Telemat. Inform. 34(2), 548–559 (2017). doi:10.1016/j.tele.2016.09.012
Kharroub, T., Bas, O.: Social media and protests: an examination of Twitter images of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. N. Media Soc. 18(9), 1973–1992 (2015). doi:10.1177/1461444815571914
Kim, S.K., Park, M.J., Rho, J.J.: Effect of the government’s use of social media on the reliability of the government: focus on Twitter. Publ. Manag. Rev. 17(3), 328–355 (2015)
Kozhamberdiyeva, Z.: Freedom of expression on the internet: a case study of Uzbekistan. Rev. Central East Eur. Law 33(1), 95–134 (2008). doi:10.1163/092598808X262542
Lee, F.L.F., Chen, H., Chan, M.: Social media use and university students’ participation in a large-scale protest campaign: the case of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Telemat. Inform. 34(2), 457–469 (2017). doi:10.1016/j.tele.2016.08.005
Lee, G., Kwak, Y.H.: An open government maturity model for social media-based public engagement. Gov. Inf. Q. 29(4), 492–503 (2012). doi:10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.001
Linders, D.: From e-government to we-government: defining a typology for citizen coproduction in the age of social media. Gov. Inf. Q. 29(4), 446–454 (2012). doi:10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.003
Mergel, I., Bretschneider, S.I.: A three-stage adoption process for social media use in government. Publ. Adm. Rev. 73(3), 390–400 (2013)
Mickoleit, A.: Social media use by governments: a policy primer to discuss trends, identify policy opportunities and guide decision makers. In: OECD Working Papers on Public Governance, vol. 26. OECD Publishing, Paris (2014). doi:10.1787/5jxrcmghmk0s-en
Mossberger, K., Wu, Y., Crawford, J.: Connecting citizens and local governments? Social media and interactivity in major U.S. cities. Gov. Inf. Q. 30(4), 351–358 (2013). doi:10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.016
Nam, T.: A tool for liberty or oppression? A cross-national study of the internet’s influence on democracy. Telemat. Inform. 34(5), 538–549 (2016). doi:10.1016/j.tele.2016.11.004
Nurullaev, R.: Website blocking in Russia: recent trends. Comput. Law Secur. Rev. 33(20), 211–222 (2016). doi:10.1016/j.clsr.2016.11.010
Picazo-Vela, S., Guitiérrez-MartÃnez, I., Luna-Reyes, L.F.: Understanding risks, benefits, and strategic alternatives of social media applications in the public sector. Gov. Inf. Q. 29(4), 504–511 (2012). doi:10.1016/j.giq.2012.07.002
Poell, T., Abdulla, R., Rieder, B., Woltering, R., Zack, L.: Protest leadership in the age of social media. Inf. Commun. Soc. 19(7), 994–1014 (2016). doi:10.1080/1369118X.2015.1088049
Rath, K.: E-petitions get 6.4 million signatures in a year (2012). http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-19266497
Said, G.R.E.: The internet social media and the Arab spring: a study of Egyptian users’ usability. In: Vision 2020: Innovation, Development Sustainability, and Economic Growth - Proceedings of 21st International Business Information Management Association Conference, IBIMA, p. 615 (2013)
Seliger, B., Schmidt, S.: The hermit kingdom goes online ··· information technology, internet use and communication policy in North Korea. North Korean Rev. 10(1), 71–88 (2014). doi:10.3172/NKR.10.1.71
Servaes, J.: The many faces of (soft) power, democracy and the internet. Telemat. Inform. 30(4), 322–330 (2013). doi:10.1016/j.tele.2013.04.001
Silencing the Messenger: Communication Apps Under Pressure. Freedom on the Net 2016 Report (2016). https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FOTN_2016_Full_Report.pdf
Staniforth, A., Nitsch, H.: Preventing terrorism together. A framework to provide social media anti-radicalization training for credible community voices. In: Emerging Trends in ICT Security, pp. 549–556 (2013). doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-411474-6.00034-7
We Are Social’s. Digital in 2016, Special Report (2016). http://wearesocial.com/uk/special-reports/digital-in-2016
Zheng, L., Zheng, T.: Innovation through social media in the public sector: information and interactions. Gov. Inf. Q. 31(Suppl. 1), S106–S117 (2014). doi:10.1016/j.giq.2014.01.011
Zheng, L.: Social media in Chinese government: drivers, challenges and capabilities. Gov. Inf. Q. 30(4), 369–376 (2013). doi:10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.017
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Shireeva, E., Martynov, A., Kaplunov, A., Ukhov, V. (2017). Blocking Social Media. Reasoning and Legal Grounds. In: Alexandrov, D., Boukhanovsky, A., Chugunov, A., Kabanov, Y., Koltsova, O. (eds) Digital Transformation and Global Society. DTGS 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 745. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69784-0_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69784-0_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69783-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69784-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)