MEDIA LAW IN THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA: CURRENT TRENDS IN DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

In the modern era, the not at all new maxim that information rules the world is getting a new, this time “digital-platform” confirmation of its truth. With the emergence of global online platforms in the 1990s, the categories of “freedom of speech”, “freedom of mass information" and “freedom of self-expression”, while gradually changing the technological formats of their embodiment and implementation, keep their democratic essence and role in the processes of personal, public and state development unchanged.
 As humankind enters its next information cycle, roughly covering the first decades of the 21st century, institutional and regulatory potential of the historically “youngest” information and communication freedom — the freedom of web-based (online) information and communication — is gradually taking shape, gaining institutional and regulatory potential. Like its antecedents (freedom of speech, press, radio and television broadcasting), it requires a certain upgrade of its social regulatory mechanisms as it “matures” and enters into the life of global, national and regional societies.
 It is the context of the implementation of this kind of innovation on the example of a specific country — Australia — that determines the basic subject of this article, its main essential component. Specific and topical manifestations of this essence are analyzed by the authors of this article using examples of legal and other regulatory systems in the Australian media sphere. For example, one of the subjects of analysis is the question of how is Australia coping with the challenge of updating its social regulatory mechanisms in the media sphere. And, as a logical consequence of the former, is there any position in Australia's relevant experience that is worthy of reception in other legal and ethical orders?
 Focusing on these issues the authors review some of the most interesting decisions taken by the Australian government over the past decade. The authors also analyse the current law and other regulatory mechanisms and instruments in Australia aimed at regulating the mass media public relations in this country as well as the main trends of their development. In particular, such as pioneer (Australia is a recognised pioneer in this sphere of legal regulation!) changes in the regulation of digital media platforms on the example of Google and Facebook (from October 28, 2021 — Meta Platforms, Inc. in Russia, admitted as extremist organization by the Moscow Tverskoi Court), and quite specific modifications of Australian national defamation law.