Last week I had an interesting experience, presenting at a workshop on regulating digital media.  (My presentation is here, for those interested).

The folks attending were, in large part, those to whom Government (in its various iterations) has decided it falls to Do Something about the regulation of social media.  However the real problem they have, as I saw it, is that the current model of regulation just doesn’t work in social media.  This is because the current model relies on the fact that information is always married to an institutionalised means of distribution and this means of distribution is both the dominant partner in this relationship and can be regulated.  However, social media is all about the liberation of information from a particular means of distribution and therefore the means of distribution (the media) has ceased to be a gatekeeper through which we can control information.

Here is an example, drawn from some of the case studies discussed.  A nightclub in Belgium was running a party called French Kiss.  Continue reading →