Social Media Regulation in International Law: Digital Sovereignty, Content Moderation, Free Speech

The aim of this thesis is to review the current international and national legal frameworks for the regulation of social media to account for the role that the international community could play in social media governance. The use and management of social platforms are both areas that are currently extensively unregulated, this allows for wrongful behaviour, cybercrime, harmful content, and many more modern threats to society to run rampant in the online community, which is famously predominantly made up of children and teenagers. We compare and analyze the international conventions, regulations and bodies that touch on the subject as well as the current national framework for social media regulation and their combined effects on the country and society. Using the latest reports, statistics, and related studies, we show that social media regulation, when in effect, can be beneficial to communities all around the globe and has the potential to facilitate positive change and the raising of awareness about important issues.