The attorney general is to publish guidance on Twitter to help prevent social media users from committing a contempt of court by commenting inappropriately on criminal cases.
Dominic Grieve QC said it was designed to make sure fair trials took place.
Comedian Alan Davies, Commons speaker's wife Sally Bercow and celebrity Peaches Geldof have all recently run into legal difficulties with careless tweets.
The advice will apply to court cases in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The rise of social media has meant that conversations about criminal cases, once had down the pub or over the garden fence, are now instantly published online - and can be shared with thousands, BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman says.
There is a public misconception that the internet is somehow a free speech zone to which the criminal and civil law does not apply. That is being corrected.
The attorney general has taken action against three men who used Twitter and Facebook to publish photographs purporting to be of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the murderers of the toddler James Bulger, as grown- ups. They breached a worldwide injunction preventing publication of any material that could identify the two killers.
Last year nine people were prosecuted for posting the name of the woman raped by former Sheffield United footballer Ched Evans, on various social media sites. All nine claimed that they did not know it was a criminal offence to name the victim of a sexual offence. Ignorance was no defence.
Instant publication on the internet can go viral at an astonishing rate but so too can the message that the criminal and civil law applies to it as much as to a considered newspaper article. Education on the law of contempt is likely to spread very rapidly online.
But Facebook and Twitter are publications subject to the same laws that in practice used to apply only to the mainstream media.
Anyone commenting about a case or defendant in a way that could prejudice a trial could be prosecuted for contempt and imprisoned.
That is why the attorney general is going to start publishing advice - that previously only went to the media - to the public via his website and Twitter feed.
It is designed to help inform people about the legal pitfalls of commenting in a way that could be seen as prejudicial to a court case or those involved.
Mr Grieve said: "Blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook mean that individuals can now reach thousands of people with a single tweet or post.
"This is an exciting prospect, but it can pose certain challenges to the criminal justice system.
"In days gone by, it was only the mainstream media that had the opportunity to bring information relating to a court case to such a large group of people that it could put a court case at risk.
"That is no longer the case and is why I have decided to publish the advisories that I have previously only issued to the media."
Mr Grieve said the move was not about telling people what they could say on social media but about helping to allow lawful comments.
Technology expert Tom Cheesewright said social media offered "instant publishing".
He said some individuals have more Twitter followers than national newspapers have subscribers but - unlike journalists - they do not have legal training or "an editor to stop them".
People may write posts while drunk or in "emotional states", he added.
"It's very unlikely we're going to have rules that stop this happening," he said.
"It's going to be about education and part of that education is going to come from high-profile prosecutions."
He said laws for print media had developed over many years and society would have to "go through the same process with social media" to develop laws and "public understanding".
Peaches Geldof apologised last week for tweeting the names of the two mothers whose babies were abused by rock star Ian Watkins.
Police are investigating the tweets over concerns that they identified protected parties.
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