17 Law in context, Vol 36, Issue 2; 2019 Received: December 8 2019, Date of acceptance: March 30, 2020, Date of publication: May 16, 2020, DOI: https://doi.org/10.26826/law-in-context.v36i2.113 The Cultural, Economic and Technical Milieu of Social Media Misconduct Dismissals in Australia and South Africa By René Cornish, (PhD Candidate at the Queensland University of Technology School of Law), Orchid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0859-3280 and Kieran Tranter, (Chair of Law, Technology and Future at Queensland University of Technology School of Law), Orchid: https://orcid. org/0000-0003-1683-2939 Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane ABSTRACT The intersection between social media activity and employment is an emerging global issue. This article examines the cultural, economic and technical milieu that has generated contested social media misconduct dismissals in Australia and South Africa. Through an analysis of 42 Australian and 97 South African decisions, it is argued that the ubiquitous, enduring and open nature of social media affects employment quite differently depending on country specific factors. In Australia, the absence of entrenched political rights has meant that employee social media use is not subject to reasonable expectations of privacy. However, there is also tolerance for a certain level of larrikin behaviour. In South Africa, the existence of enshrined rights manifests differently in the context of social media dismissal. Within a culturally diverse population with deeply fractured race relations, the decisions reveal a White minority still perpetuating dominance over a historically disadvantaged Black workforce. Keywords – Employment, Dismissal, Social Media, Facebook and Twitter Acknowledgements. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their detailed and insightful comments. Disclosure statement – No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. License – This work is under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Suggested citation: René Cornish and Kieran Tranter, “The Cultural, Economic and Technical Milieu of Social Media Misconduct Dismissals in Australia and South Africa” Law in Context, 36 (2): 17-48. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26826/law-in-context.v36i2.113 1. INTRODUCTION In the space of 10 years social media has become a signifi- cant factor in human life. The 2016 US Presidential election has particularly turned attention to the impact of social media – as media – on public institutions and public trust (Sunstein 2018). Simultaneously, there has emerged significant literature focused on the impact of social media on individuals, from their sense of wellbeing and mental health to their feelings of security and optimism for the future. 1 One of the obvious impacts of social media is where claims of social media misconduct by employees is used by employers as the basis for dismissing the employee (Davis 2015). 1 On the changing emphasises and concerns with social media, see generally Lomborg (2017).