Social media data is often overlooked as an important ESI source. CloudNine discussed the importance of unlocking social media data in this post.

In their post titled Exploring the Future of Legal Innovation at The Masters Conference: Thought Leadership in D.C. and Social Media in Discovery and Investigations, available here, CloudNine recaps a session on social media at The Masters Conference DC event, which was titled “Unlocking Social Media Data,” sponsored by SMI Aware, and which examined the investigative value of social media evidence.

Why does social media evidence matter?

Since much of our life events are journaled online, critical evidence is often found in unexpected places—Instagram posts, Venmo transactions, Reddit threads, and business collaboration tools like Slack and GitHub. The session opened with a challenge: What if your case hinges on something someone posted online—then deleted?

Social media can tell a story that contradicts a claim, verifies an alibi, or reveals patterns that shift the legal narrative. Whether it’s a workers’ comp investigation or a high-stakes wrongful termination suit, open-source data is no longer a “nice to have”—it’s a necessity.

One thing that Josh Janow and Paige Hansen of SMI Aware did at the beginning was to invite volunteers to have their social media presence assessed live. Using SMI Aware’s platform, the team conducted real-time OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) research on those individuals, compiling reports to present at the 11 a.m. breakout session. I’ll bet that was quite enlightening!

So, what is the importance of OSINT for early case assessment? What are the legal and ethical imperatives for unlocking social media data? And what types of real-world investigations can benefit from social media and OSINT data? Find out here, it’s just one click! Don’t wait until I share this post on social media! 🤣

So, what do you think? Where does social media data fit into your eDiscovery plan? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4o’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot lawyer looking at a social media site on a desktop computer in a futuristic law firm office”.

Disclosure: CloudNine is an Educational Partner and sponsor of eDiscovery Today

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