Like contempt of court, the fear of getting it wrong and facing a defamation action is always in the back of a reporter’s mind.

With this in mind, media organisations have a long history of educating their staff about the dangers.

Of course, even with this training under their belts, reporters can get it wrong.

It comes as no surprise to read in News Ltd papers that a Sydney law firm has noticed a massive jump in the number of people looking to take defamation action over social media posts.

New Ltd reported yesterday: “While defamation disputes were once the reserve of big publishers and news broadcasters, a Sydney lawyer says social media is changing the landscape of defamation in Australia.”

“’The internet has created a new class of publishers – ordinary, everyday people who are posting comments about each other on public forums,” the lawyer said.

“’As a result, we are seeing more defamatory material being published on social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, and a new wave of social media defamation cases arising.’

“The law firm says that, in the past financial year, 48 per cent of its defamation inquiries were about material posted on social media, with most of those relating to Facebook posts.”

Defamation, is at its simplest, is to spread bad reports about someone which could do them harm.

To defame someone, you do not have to make up false things yourself. You might defame a person by repeating or replaying words spoken by someone else, for example an interviewee. It is no defence to claim that you were only quoting someone else.

If you print or broadcast something defamatory, you could be taken to court, along with your producer, your editor or station manager and the person who said the words in the first place.

New Ltd went on to report: “The lawyer pointed to recent court cases the firm had been involved in where a person was accused of serious criminal offences on Facebook, and another who was defamed on a blog.”

“’Last year, a NSW teenager was ordered to pay his former teacher $105,000 for defaming her on Twitter, and this year, in WA, a woman had to pay her ex-husband $12,500 after she posted damaging allegations against him on Facebook,’ the lawyer said.

“’I expect that, as a result of these types of cases, we will continue to receive more inquiries’.”

We all know that the internet continues to revolutionise our lives and, quite often, we are struggling to keep up.

The popularity of social media is only going to continue to grow and new forms will continue to appear, so users need to become aware of the potential dangers of what they are posting.

Just as smartphones have the capacity to make all of us into paparazzi photographers, social media – in many different platforms – turns all of its users into journalists.

Once a user posts an item on social media, they effectively lose control of how far it will be shared.

No matter how tight your privacy settings are, it just takes one person to share it with another and you’re on your way to a post going viral – and an aggrieved party to go to their lawyer.