The brief
14 November 2026
Court & Screen covers law, evidence and life online, in plain English. We bring together analysis from legal scholars and researchers writing in The Conversation with our own reporting on how courts, regulators and practitioners deal with what happens on social media. New filings are dated in the record of changes and in our RSS feed, and every source we cite is linked so readers can check it.
Identity under attack
Nicola Henry's new research shows deepfakes are hurting ordinary people, not just celebrities, and that many victims felt no one helped. At the other end of the fame scale, Graeme Austin explains how stars are using the civil courts against deepfakes, and Rachel Maguire sets out your rights when someone catfishes with your photos.
Platforms and the law
Australia's digital duty of care bill is now before parliament, and Kimberlee Weatherall explains what it asks of platforms. Daniel Angus explains why the government won't ban sock puppet accounts, and Cassandra Mudgway's work on the abuse of female MPs makes the case for reform.
Speech, power and silence
Francesca Farrington examines how SLAPPs and NDAs are used to silence victims of sexual offending, and Luke Beck argues that a plan to stop criticism of senior officials online may be unconstitutional. Cavell Ord-Shrimpton's piece on message drift explains why posts so often end up meaning something their authors never intended.
Work and consequences
Brady Robards studied hundreds of cases to find out who really gets fired over social media posts. His findings matter to employers running investigations as much as to employees. Most of the cases he studied turned on posts that someone had saved, which is a reminder that in workplace disputes the record often matters as much as the conduct itself.
Keeping the record
Every one of these stories turns on evidence: a post, a video, a comment thread. Our feature looks at how legal teams preserve social media evidence before it disappears, the authentication rules in the US and Australia, and how platforms such as Social Media Evidence record a hash and a server timestamp for every file they capture.
Explainer: authentication in plain English
Before a court relies on a post, someone has to show that it is what they say it is. In US federal courts, Rule 901 sets that threshold, and Rule 902 lets certain electronic records be authenticated through a certification, including data verified by a process of digital identification such as a hash. In Australia, section 146 of the Evidence Act allows a court to presume that a reliable process or device produced its usual outcome.
In practice, that means three things matter most: where the content came from, when it was collected and whether it has changed since. A hash value answers the third question, a server timestamp answers the second, and a full-account capture with URLs and comments answers the first. The Sedona Conference Primer on Social Media is a useful guide for practitioners who want the detail.
Reader questions
Is a screenshot enough? Sometimes it is accepted, but it is easy to challenge. A capture that records the source URL, the account, the collection time and a hash gives the court far more to check. Our evidence feature explains the difference.
What is a hash? A short fingerprint calculated from a file. If the file changes, even slightly, the hash changes, so a matching hash shows a file is the same as when it was collected.
What about private accounts? Capture tools work on public content. Private messages and locked accounts are usually obtained through the legal process, such as discovery, subpoenas or court orders.
When should I preserve a post? As early as possible. Content is often deleted or hidden as soon as a dispute begins, and a platform's own retention may not help you in time.
Do I need my own social media account to capture one? Not with services such as Social Media Evidence, which capture public accounts directly and record the integrity data for each file.
What to watch
- Duty of care in practice. If Australia's bill passes, expect platform obligations to shape what records exist and how quickly harmful content comes down.
- Deepfakes in evidence. As synthetic media spreads, courts will ask harder questions about where a file came from and whether it has been altered.
- Platform retention. Platforms change what they keep and for how long, and law enforcement requests can take months. Parties who preserve content themselves at the start of a matter are less exposed to those changes.
- Workplace policies. Employers are writing social media rules into codes of conduct, and investigations increasingly depend on preserved posts.
Sources we rely on
- The US Federal Rules of Evidence, via Cornell's Legal Information Institute, for authentication in US federal courts.
- The Evidence Act 1995 (Cth), via AustLII, for Australian evidence law.
- The Sedona Conference, whose primer on social media is a standard reference for preservation and discovery.
- NIST, for technical definitions such as hash values.
- Peer-reviewed research and legal scholarship, much of it republished here from The Conversation with full credit.
Republished articles appear unedited with their authors and institutions and link to the original. Read our editorial standards. Write to editors@courtandscreen.site.
