Victoria Police warns its Facebook audience of its legal responsibilities today. "Overnight, the sentiment was very much of grief and sadness and now this morning, anger is starting creep into what is being shared and re-shared." With that anger comes responsibility to social media users, who become content publishers when they post. That may require a knowledge of media law. A Facebook hate group against the accused in the Meagher case has already attracted almost 18,000 "likes". Victoria Police has posted a message on its Facebook page this morning warning users of their legal responsibilities in posting and reminding that "it is inappropriate to post speculation or comments about matters before the courts".



Thomas Meagher, Jill's husband, today urged people to consider what they posted on Twitter and Facebook.



"While I appreciate all the support, I would just like to mention that negative comments on social media may hurt legal proceedings so please be mindful of that," Mr Meagher said after the man accused of his wife's murder fronted court.

University of Canberra journalism academic Julie Posetti said users needed to be aware of potential implications of "trial by social media" by posting about the accused. "In this particular case, it would be awful to think about the potential consequences including an incapacity to prosecute somebody because of trial by social media, for example," said Ms Posetti, who is writing a PhD on Twitter's role in journalism. "We all are very familiar with the term trial by media and it's a real problem, but we also now need to be aware of the potential implications of trial by social media. "Practically, [and speaking] generically, as soon as a person is arrested, we need to stop talking about what we think we know about that individual because there is a risk that his or her defence lawyers could argue that there's no possibility for a fair trial in this country for the person who's accused, because so much information has been published. "If we go back to this case, identification will be crucial, so if this person's picture is plastered everywhere it becomes a problem which is why we see the traditional media, particularly in Victoria, blotting his face so he's not recognisable."

In a statement earlier today, Ms Meagher's uncle, Michael McKeon, acknowledged the role social media had played in the search for his niece. "We believe that it has helped us in the search, but it's not the outcome that we had hoped and prayed for. We thank the people around the world who have helped support us," he said. Ms Boschma said the CCTV footage of Ms Meagher had been viewed millions of times on social media. She said this was a good example of "action-oriented" information sharing. "Victoria Police are really to be commended for releasing that footage, I think; they took a calculated risk, but it absolutely broke open the case and the rate of sharing, I think, helped spread action-oriented information and really, that's what people want at times like this," she said. "The second reason why social media is so important in instances like this is a sense of connection and community, and people want to feel connected to others who feel the same as them.

"Where things start to become incredible, I guess, is that Jill's name had appeared in more than 35 million Twitter feeds in the early stages of this case and a lot of the sharing came from Australia and Ireland. "The community has extended across the globe via social media, which I think is really powerful and hopefully it's provided some comfort for people." But Ms Boschma warned that the Facebook page created to help find Ms Meagher would now have to be carefully moderated. "The message about being careful about what's being shared doesn't seem to be getting through," she said. "They [the page moderators] need to be really careful about what's put up and they need to start moderating. This challenge of moderating Facebook pages is something that goes on every day and it's now time for them to do that, to ensure criminal proceedings go the way they should go."

Ms Posetti said this case "perfectly highlights the enormous power and potential of social media - and also the great risks". She said it was possible that the online community encouraged to help find Ms Meagher could be "the undoing potentially of a prosecution, if the community now takes it upon itself to do things like reconstruct the alleged perpetrator's history". "While everybody now has the capacity to contribute to public conversation about issues including this very tragic story, and that might be really valuable and useful information ... unless you are a lawyer or a person who has a professional responsibility for publication, you're unlikely to be aware of the very serious risks that exist, particularly in a criminal case and particularly with regards to the threat to a trial." Ms Posetti called for a community education program to be rolled out among the community for greater media literacy. She also expressed concern at the low levels of understanding among some users that the law applied to them on the internet.

"There is a belief that is alarmingly wide-spread that you can say what you want on the internet without any consequences, and while I'm an advocate for freedom of expression, I know that's absolutely not the case and there are practical reasons why that's not the case," Ms Posetti said. "We can have arguments about the need for defamation laws, for example, but we're talking about something much more serious. We're talking about a criminal prosecution involving a horrendous crime and we have to be aware that the law as it stands does apply to all forms of publication, whether that's a blog or a Twitter feed or a Facebook page, particularly with regard to legal and court reporting. "The law does not necessarily equate with justice. The law and our collective sense of justice are not necessarily the same thing so if what we want to do is ensure justice is done, we have to figure out how to play within the law on this." In Britain earlier this year, police arrested and questioned seven men after they named a woman raped by a professional soccer player. The player, Ched Evans, was jailed for five years. Loading

Ms Boschma added that the "vast majority of people" who used social media did so for good, or for self-interest. "There's very, very few who use social media for negative purposes. It's just that we often tend to talk about the negative purposes," she said.



with Andrea Petrie