Naseem Shah MP v Muhammad Ashraf Chohan

In determining the natural and ordinary meaning of a tweet, the court must adopt the perspective of the hypothetical reasonable reader of that medium. The approach should be impressionistic and take the whole publication and its directly available context into account. Context may include common knowledge and material reasonably read by all publishees, but not information known only to some readers. A video embedded in a tweet may illustrate the accompanying words without requiring forensic analysis of every detail. A statement is opinion where, viewed in context, it amounts to criticism or comment and its basis is sufficiently indicated. On the facts, the tweet conveyed the defamatory comment that the claimant’s support for Black Lives Matter meant that she supported vandalism.

The claimant, a Member of Parliament, brought a libel claim concerning a tweet published by the defendant. The tweet referred to her alleged support for vandalism and embedded a short video depicting an attack on a retail kiosk.

The parties agreed that preliminary issues should determine the tweet’s natural and ordinary meaning, whether that meaning was defamatory, whether the tweet was fact or opinion, and, if opinion, whether its basis was indicated. The defendant sought to rely on additional contemporaneous tweets as context, but the court refused to admit them.

1. Preliminary issues. The court held that the tweet referred to the Black Lives Matter movement. It was common knowledge that the movement concerned discrimination against the black community, that its supporters had engaged in public protests, and that some protests had involved disorder or vandalism. The court rejected any assumption that the reasonable reader would know specific incidents or the claimant’s views of the movement ([28]–[29]).
2. Context and medium. The reasonable reader would read the tweet fleetingly and impressionistically. The word “congrats” would be understood as sarcastic. The video would be taken as a generic example of vandalism illustrating the author’s point, rather than analysed in detail to identify every act depicted ([27], [30]–[31]).
3. Additional material. The selected tweets and accompanying letter were not admitted as directly available context. They were not part of the pleaded case, and the circumstances in which the material had been compiled and published were insufficiently explained ([24]–[26]).
4. Meaning and characterisation. The natural and ordinary meaning was that the claimant’s support for Black Lives Matter meant that she supported vandalism, as depicted in the video. That meaning was defamatory at common law. The tweet was comment, criticism or observation rather than a statement of fact. Its basis was sufficiently indicated by the claimant’s support for Black Lives Matter and the disorder accompanying some of its protests ([32]).