Legal Mechanism of Counteracting Information Aggression in Social Networks: from Theory to Practice

An open public discourse is one of the basic conditions of democracy, because this is how citizens can discuss their common matters, form political opinions and ultimately reach a decision for themselves. To have a lively and rational discourse, media freedom, individual freedom of expression and the right to receive information are equally needed. Today’s media environment gives individuals the chance to express their ideas at every possible instance – in this respect, the pluralism of ideas is overwhelming. This overwhelming volume of information makes navigation and access to trustworthy information a hard task. Today social networks created a new public space that can be flexibly utilized to get any message to selected parts of the audience. It has no national boundaries, a feature that can be used not only for good purposes, but often for bad ones such such as slander. The article is noted that social networks act as a separate sphere for the emergence, change or termination of civil legal relations, therefore the urgent question is to clarify the application of the legal mechanism in the fight against information aggression, which includes the following components: the discovery of inaccurate information, which is not just an appraisal judgments, but frankly slander outlining the range of probable defendants; making an application to the court in accordance with the requirements of national legislation; proving the fact of unreliability by providing evidence.