MR JUSTICE WARBY Approved Judgment Monroe v Hopkins [2017] EWHC 433 (QB) matters of ordinary general knowledge; and (b) matters that were put before that reader via Twitter. 36. As to the characteristics of the readership, it has been said that in a Twitter case, “The hypothetical reader must be taken to be a reasonable representative of users of Twitter who follow the Defendant”: McAlpine [58] (Tugendhat J). The mechanics of the medium mean however that the readership of a tweet may go beyond followers of the defendant, and extend to followers of other Twitter users: see How Twitter Works at [14]. This case is an illustration. But nobody has attempted to establish by evidence any particular characteristics of the groups of Twitter readers this case is concerned with that could have a bearing on meaning. It is not in dispute that the followers of the parties (and, I would add, visitors to their homepages) are likely to be people who are at least broadly sympathetic to the contrasting political stances of Ms Monroe and Ms Hopkins. This means, on the facts, that there were groups of readers who read what was said from different political standpoints. But that is not relevant to the meaning of words. 37. There has been some debate about another issue: what are the limits of categories (a) and (b) at [35] above? How much should be regarded as known to a reader via Twitter, or as general knowledge held by such a reader? I am not sure that the answers matter a great deal for the resolution of the question that I am now addressing, or for the outcome of this case overall. But in principle the main dividing lines seem reasonably clear. A matter can be treated as known to the reader if the court accepts that it was so well-known that, for practical purposes, everybody knew it. An example would be the fact that the Conservatives formed a government after the 2015 General Election. A matter can be treated as known to the ordinary reader of a tweet if it is clearly part of the statement made by the offending tweet itself, such as an item to which a hyperlink is provided. The external material forms part of the tweet as a whole, which the hypothetical reader is assumed to read. This much seems to be common ground in this case. Ordinary readers of the tweets complained of had information that a war memorial had been sprayed with offensive graffiti. 38. The third point concerns material on Twitter that is external to the tweet itself. This is perhaps less straightforward. I would conclude that a matter can be treated as part of the context in which an offending tweet if it is on Twitter and sufficiently closely connected in time, content, or otherwise that it is likely to have been in the hypothetical reader’s view, or in their mind, at the time they read the words complained of. This test is not the same as but is influenced by the test for whether two publications are to be treated as one for the purposes of defamation: Dee v Telegraph Media Group Ltd [2010] EWHC 924 (QB) [2010] EMLR 20 [29] (Sharp J). 39. I would include as context parts of a wider Twitter conversation in which the offending tweet appeared, and which the representative hypothetical ordinary reader is likely to have read. This would clearly include an earlier tweet or reply which was available to view on the same page as the offending material. It could include earlier material, if sufficiently closely connected. But it is not necessarily the case that it would include tweets from days beforehand. The nature of the medium is such that these disappear from view quite swiftly, for regular users. It may also be necessary, in some cases, to take account of the fact that the way Twitter works means that a given tweet can appear in differing contexts to different groups, or even to different