Social media and concepts of content and communications regulation

Social media involves the communication of content (whether professional or user generated) amongst users of a service. The term covers a range of online experiences. The most prominent examples of social media are the social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook), but virtual worlds (World of Warcraft, Second Life), blogs, wikis and file sharing sites and software (YouTube, Flickr, Limewire) are also caught in this category of online interaction. For our purposes, the importance of social media is that it simultaneously functions as a communications platform and as a distribution mechanism for all forms of media content. In combining these functions, social media represents an attack on the dividing line between broadcasting and personal communications