Managing and collecting social media for e-discovery.

• Author: Allen, Lauren A.
• Position: Cover story

Understanding the fundamentals of social networking services, the tools for managing, collecting, and authenticating information they contain, and the way to scope collection efforts can help organizations avoid evidentiary and authentication pitfalls.

Social networking services (SNS) are now an entrenched form of business and personal communication that requires the attention of records and information management (RIM) professionals and attorneys.

As described by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristin Mix (District of Colorado) in "Discovery of Social Media" in The Federal Courts Law Review,, Vol. 5, Issue 2, social media includes [internal citations omitted] '"web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.'"

This description includes the current array of SNS types: blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, web, video sites, and other new and evolving methods, as well as the most commonly used SNS: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Foursquare.

Ubiquity of Social Media

Organizations, both public and private, are embracing SNS.

In the private sector, a benchmark report from social media management company Spredfast, Q2 2012 Social Engagement Index, indicates that companies average 29 internal users of 51 accounts across an average of three SNS.

In an example from the public sector, as listed on the U.S. Navy's Social Media Directory, some 672 organizations within the Navy alone have one or more SNS presence.

Numbers for SNS use by individuals are no less staggering. For example, in the October 4, 2012, online Newsroom, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg headlined a posting with "One Billion People on Facebook."

Similarly, according to Nielsen's State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012, the total number of minutes spent on SNS by users on mobile and PC devices increased 21% between July 2011 and July 2012.

Legal Implications of Social Media

With the rise in personal and professional use of SNS, RIM professionals and attorneys are increasingly required to address social media in both compliance and litigation. But, because social media evolved quickly--and to a large extent is still evolving--and because it is hosted in the amorphous cloud, these professionals are often unaware which properties of social media information are valuable as evidence.

As a result, organizations, attorneys, courts, and regulators are all grappling with the legal and practical implications of retaining, collecting, managing, and presenting social media information in a litigation context.

U.S. Courts, Agency Provide Guidance

According to a blog and lists published on the website of X1 Discovery, an e-discovery and enterprise search solutions provider, more than 900 court cases in the past two years addressed evidence from SNS. Cumulatively, these cases leave little doubt that the standard discovery framework--and resulting records management requirements --apply to social media in the same way they apply to myriad other electronic evidence.

Similarly, The Sedona Conference[R] Primer on Social Media, published in December 2012, notes that the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and Food and Drug Administration have all issued guidance on social media use in their respective regulated industries.

Keys for Managing Social Media

Social media, like cloud-based e-mail and network infrastructure solutions, presents unique challenges in terms of monitoring, collecting, and managing the information as it resides on third-party network infrastructure and outside an end user's or organization's control.

To effectively manage social media information and ensure that organizations remain in compliance with their obligations during discovery, attorneys and RIM professionals need to:

1. Understand the types of information available from social media sources and determine what...