THE PRIMARY TWEET: ARE THE MEANINGS CARRIED?
Applicable principles
119 Mr Greenwich bears the onus of proving, on the balance of probabilities, that the alleged defamatory imputations were conveyed. That is a question of fact.
120 The court is required to determine the meaning of the publications objectively, by reference to the standards of the hypothetical ordinary reasonable reader. The ordinary reasonable reader is (a) of fair, average intelligence, experience and education; (b) fair-minded; (c) neither perverse, morbid nor suspicious of mind, nor avid for scandal; (d) a person who does not live in an ivory tower, but can and does read between the lines in light of general knowledge and experience of worldly affairs; (e) a person who does not search for strained or forced meanings; and (f) a person who reads the entire matter complained of and considers the context as a whole. See, by way of example only, Hanson v Burston [2023] FCAFC 124 at [44] (Wigney, Wheelahan and Abraham JJ).
121 The Court must arrive at a single objective meaning, being that which an objective audience composed of ordinary decent persons should have collectively understood the matter to bear. The manner in which the publication was actually understood, and the publisher's intended meaning, is irrelevant to the question of meaning. See, eg, Lee v Wilson (1934) 51 CLR 276 at 288 (Dixon J); Australian Broadcasting Corporation v Chau Chak Wing (2019) 271 FCR 632 at 646–7 [32]–[33] (Besanko, Bromwich and Wheelahan JJ); Hanson at [46].
122 When it comes to interpreting social media posts, regard must be had to the impressionistic nature of the medium and over analysis is to be avoided.
123 In Bazzi v Dutton (2022) 289 FCR 1 at 9 [29], Rares and Rangiah JJ quoted the following passage from the judgment of Lord Kerr JSC in Stocker v Stocker [2020] AC 593 at 605–6 [41]–[43]:
[41] The fact that this was a Facebook post is critical. The advent of the 21st century has brought with it a new class of reader: the social media user. The judge tasked with deciding how a Facebook post or a tweet on Twitter would be interpreted by a social media user must keep in mind the way in which such postings and tweets are made and read.
[42] In Monroe v Hopkins [2017] 4 WLR 68, Warby J at para 35 said this about tweets posted on Twitter:
The most significant lessons to be drawn from the authorities as applied to a case of this kind seem to be the rather obvious ones, that this is a conversational medium; so it would be wrong to engage in
