It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.

The Law of Memes: Can Internet Culture Redefine Legal Norms?

-- By AngelAnene - 20 Feb 2025

Section I : *Examining the Effect of Social Media in the Legal System*

Subsection A: Trials

Subsub 1: Evidence gathering

The primary impact of social media on the legal system is its function as a source of evidence in legal cases. “From proving alibis to demonstrating a person’s state of mind, social media content has been used extensively to bolster legal arguments” (Habba 2023). Photos and videos shared on these sites provide courts with additional information that otherwise would not obviously be confirmed. Namely geographic locations and metadata which often serve to support or disprove people’s alibis.

Subsection B Jury selection

Social media is also a tool in the jury selection process. Attorneys examine jurors’ social media accounts and internet presence to determine any possible biases (Habba 2023). This process helps maintain impartiality and integrity in the legal process.

Subsub 1

Subsub 2

Section II *Possible challenges of increased social media influence in the legal system*

Subsection A Privacy concerns

While identifying biases that harm the impartiality of jurors is beneficial to the integrity of a case, the use of social media in this regard presents many relevant privacy concerns (Habba 2023). As aforementioned, social media use challenges the maintenance of privacy within courtrooms. For example, if jurors unlawfully share information via social media about the case at hand, the privacy of that matter is put to risk.

Furthermore, people’s digital footprints can be manipulated to fit a certain narrative that attorneys constructed. In the court of public opinion, conceptions are constructed of individuals involved in the cases that have tangible and relevant effects on these people. This is bound to affect individuals of color and other marginalized communities disproportionately.

Technology is man-created and thus reflects human nature and the natural biases people hold. Social media use in the legal system reflects and perpetuates negative stereotypes of folks of color that can damage their reputation. What one sees with their eyes tends to be believed to be the truth regardless of whether it is factual or not. The internet’s role in the legal system thus exacerbates harm and makes achieving justice quite difficult.

Subsection B Authenticity

In addition to privacy concerns, social media’s role in the legal system presents issues of authenticity. Social media’s dynamic nature causes difficulty in gathering unaltered, relevant evidence. In this era of Photoshop, AI, deepfakes, etc., people must be hyper-aware and critical of the images presented in front of them. As these tools advance, this will continue to become more and more difficult.

There are also concerns regarding jurors’ ability to remain impartial due to social media’s growing role in society. Social media presents more ways for jurors to commit misconduct than were not present decades earlier. They may likely research aspects of the case online or communicate with others via the web about confidential aspects of the case (Gruce 2024).

Solving this issue requires lawyers throughout the legal community to remain up to date on these various complexities. Although this is not something everyone will be willing or able to accomplish independently, I argue that it is essential to reconcile these issues and maintain the justice system.

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