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Statutory Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) who act as the guardians of data protection across the European Economic Area (EEA) have faced unprecedented interpretative challenges as a result of the explosion of indeterminate publication by individuals in the form of blogs, social networking and other online forums. Through both a questionnaire and systematic review of EEA DPA websites, this article finds that these regulators have generally adopted a strict interpretation of the law here, although considerable internal variation is also present. Almost all see data protection as engaged, around half argue that publication in the general social networking context requires data subject consent and even when individual publication is targeted towards the collective public many DPAs demonstrate some reluctance to apply the special expressive purposes (aka the journalistic) derogation. This article argues for an alternative tripartite approach under the forthcoming Regulation which accommodates the competing free expression rights and also the limited capabilities reasonably to be expected of private individuals on a sounder and more consistent basis. The law's personal exemption should cover individual publication so long as this does not pose a serious prima facie risk to privacy or other fundamental data protection rights. The special expressive purposes derogation should protect individuals who are disseminating a message to the collective public without discrimination. Finally, the Regulation's new freedom of expression clause should ensure that individual publication which principally instantiates self-expression is subject only to the core of data protection's substantive and supervisory provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to assess the level of legal security of social media users and so-called citizen journalists, we need to answer the question that according to current EU journalistic laws, information published by them can be granted the status of expression for journalistic purposes and, if so, under what conditions could this be done? In order to achieve this purpose, a review of literature, acts of law, their discussion and interpretation was conducted, and the netnography method was applied. Our analysis shows that social media users have the same rights when exercising freedom of expression as professional journalists. In our opinion equalising the legal status of an ordinary publication with a press release, both from the perspective of Article 10 of the ECHR and Article 85 of the GDPR, takes place under certain conditions. They are listed on a casuistic basis in the jurisdiction of the ECtHR and the ECJ and interpreted according to the concept of social media responsibility. The conducted research shows, however, that assessing the legal status of the user's speech is very complicated and requires legal knowledge and knowledge of jurisprudence. This factor significantly affects the level of information security and the actual scope of protection of the freedom of speech of Internet users participating in public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We investigated Twitter’s use in citizen journalism in the Wisconsin labor protests. [•] Study of 775,030 tweets revealed differences in mobile and non-mobile use. [•] Mobile users were more likely to post news links. [•] Tweets with links also contained more hashtags than those without. [•] Results suggest two-part #wiunion network: protesters and virtual supporters. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]