Network society theory stipulates that the concrete content for judicial concepts and legal norms is derived through the network. This means that the network-given meaning may and may not coincide with the original meaning at the time of its genesis – attributed to these concepts and norms when they were coined. The main objection against applying the network approach to digital human rights is the loss of the claim to legitimacy in the course of regulation. This appears in different versions, which at first sight are polarised and irreconcilable. The first version claims that the legitimacy argument is lost in networks, and the second claims to the contrary that networks are capable of providing human rights legitimacy. Fukuyama has suggested trust as a characterising feature of networks. The transposition of the element of trust from offline to online networks deprives trust of its original semantic meaning, since trust then would not be something which has to be earned but something which is given. Non-coherence theory explains that this is what happens when concepts are automatically taken from the offline realm and planted in the online.

Media and communication influence, shape, and change our societies. Therefore, this first chapter aims to explain the implications of digital communication for our societies and the relationship between media, technology, and society. The chapter introduces the concept of society from a sociological perspective and explains how societies change because of the effects technological developments have on them, and vice versa. It illustrates this interplay with the example of digital divides.

In order to explain the significance and changes of public communication in a digital society, the chapters zooms in on the media landscape and explicates the difference between new media and old (or traditional) media. It pays particular attention to the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, as his work remains a cornerstone when studying the relationship between media, technology, and society. The chapter then outlines the discipline of media linguistics and explains how media linguistics can help to make digital media and digital communication more tangible. It focuses on three key terms crucial for understanding public digital communication: multimodality, media convergence, and mediatization.

Thomas Nakayama discusses the importance of ‘critical intercultural communication’, i.e. an approach that he has proposed, defined and very substantially developed, with particular regard for interactions in an environment increasingly shaped by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Since, despite the rise of the network society, overall little attention has been paid to the ways that social media influence intercultural communication, the chapter introduces examples that allow for an in-depth exploration of the ways that social inequality is reinforced in the digital environment, as well as the ways that people utilize social media to resist that inequality.