Defamation Law
Defamation is, essentially, concerned with the publication of lies, or untruths and a defamatory statement is one which lowers the claimant in the estimation of right thinking members of society. The general rule of UK defamation law is that the publisher of a defamation faces liability and this applies to FE and HE institutions as publishers in the same way as to any other publisher . So where an institution maintains control over what its users publish, it is likely to be considered a "publisher" of this material for the purposes of defamation.