Overcoming Social Media eDiscovery Challenges Part 1: Identification and Preservation
By Helen Geib, General Counsel and Practice Support Consultant, QDiscovery
Social media is dynamic, interactive and informal. The very qualities that make social media so attractive to its users create a plethora of practical challenges in eDiscovery. Recognizing social media eDiscovery challenges is the first step to overcoming them, beginning at the initial stages of the EDRM process.
This is the first in a three part series on social media eDiscovery. The next post in this series will cover the technical and practical challenges of social media collection.
Social media’s dynamic nature creates identification and preservation challenges
The dynamic quality of social media creates barriers to identification and preservation that don’t arise with traditional sources of ESI such as computers and email systems. In contrast to those relatively static sources, social media is in a constant state of flux.
Complicating the situation further, there are two distinct categories of social media change. The first is developments by social media providers:
- New platforms and applications are introduced
- Old services and features gain and lose users
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Platform features are added, removed and altered in response to technological developments, market forces and user preferences
