While the White House and politicians said it was too soon to talk about gun laws in the immediate aftermath of last week’s Connecticut school shooting, social media users resoundingly disagreed. 

By Friday night, only hours after the shooting, roughly one-third of Twitter and blog posts about the shooting were about changing America’s gun laws – with the authors arguing both for and against – a radical change from previous high-profile shooting tragedies, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism reported Thursday. Twitter users and bloggers wanted to have the conversation immediately, and gun law chatter was more popular even than expressions of sympathy – 28 percent to 20 percent.

The 28 percent figure represented the percentage of posts on Twitter and blogs related to the Newtown, Conn., shooting that mentioned gun laws over the first 72 hours after the shooting.  That compares to only 3 percent of the social media discussion in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings last year in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was seriously injured and six others were killed.

In Pew's analysis, 25 percent of Newtown-related tweets and 20 percent of blogs offered sympathy or prayers for the victims.

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"There was this outpouring of emotion, but it was aligned with a sense that we have to do something about this," said Amy Mitchell, deputy director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "What we're seeing is not only a good deal of conversation in general about gun law and gun law reform, which we haven't seen in other recent shootings, but that conversation came from the get-go."

There's no way to know if that surge in gun law chatter impacted the political debate in Washington, or has helped create an atmosphere more conducive to gun control debate, but the outpouring had at least one immediate impact. After receiving an avalanche of negative comments, the National Rifle Association temporarily took down its Facebook page last week. It's since been restored.

Supporters of tougher gun laws were a majority in Pew's study. On Twitter, 64 percent called for reform, while 21 percent defended gun rights and 14 percent offered neutral comments. Some 46 percent of blogs posts called for reform, with 21 percent opposed and 32 percent taking neither side, Pew says. Facebook posts were not considered in the study because privacy settings limit research, Mitchell said.

Social media chatter followed a very different tack after the Giffords shooting: While just 3 percent discussed gun control, 34 percent involved political commentary, “mainly about the heated political discourse in our country and its possible relationship to the shooting, “ according to the study. Twenty-nine percent involved straight facts.

Pew also compared the Newtown social media reaction to posts published after the Trayvon Martin shooting in February. Anger at his alleged killer, George Zimmerman, accounted for 21 percent of chatter on Twitter, followed by sympathy for Martin, at 19 percent.  Discussion of gun laws, and specifically Florida's Stand Your Ground statue, accounted for only 7 percent of the posts.

Did all this social media chatter about gun control have an immediate impact?  Looking at President Barack Obama's reaction to the Newtown tragedy may be instructive.

When Obama delivered his initial comments on the Newtown shooting on Friday, he made only a vague reference to gun law reform, saying, "We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this." White House spokesman Jay Carney was more specific, saying "today is not the day" for the discussion in a press briefing.

Gun law reform supporters were deeply critical of the administration's reaction.

"The White House says 'today is not the day' to talk about gun legislation. Correct. That day was yesterday," became a common Facebook update and tweet, echoing a statement made by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

By Sunday, Obama's tone had changed.

"In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens ... in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have?" he said at a vigil service in Newtown.

Does Mitchell think the steady social media drumbeat helped nudge Obama toward action?

"We can't draw an exact cause and effect here," she said. "But clearly the conversation in social media is a very big part of the way information flows now," she said. "If you think about the cycle of information and reaction, and the way the government works, leaders are reacting to events and to the public, and what resonates with the public, and these things all continue to play off each other as time goes on.”

Social media expert Steve Rubel, an analyst at public relations firm Edelman, cautioned against giving social media too much credit for the current atmosphere in which discussion of gun control suddenly seems safe.

"Sometimes social media is directly responsible for driving shifts in public opinion,” he said. “But what can get overlooked, however, is how it's a mirror and a magnifier of what's happening in society. (There's) a heightened interest overall. Social may be reflecting a larger conversation, much of which is happening offline as well."

Other research appears to confirm Pew's findings. For example, there's been a huge spike this week in search engine requests for the term "gun control" -- a much larger spike than after the Virginia Tech shootings, the Giffords shooting or the Aurora shootings.

"So yes, the social increase is unusual," Rubel said. But it's unclear if social media impact has staying power, and whether it's a match for the standard snail's-like pace of federal legislation. "What will be important to watch is whether the unprecedented interest is so large that the issue remains at the forefront," he said.

Even if the social media surge doesn’t last, Pew’s Mitchell says its impact should not be underestimated.

"If we think about the narrative and agenda that gets created around certain news events, more and more that narrative has many different players, and the public is one of them to the degree that they couldn’t be five or six years ago," she said.

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Pam Broviak

A mother who says her middle-school daughter was forced to let school officials browse the 13-year-old girl’s private Facebook page is speaking out against the practice because, she says, "other parents are scared to talk about it."

Pam Broviak, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Geneva, Ill., says her daughter was traumatized when the principal of Geneva Middle School South forced the child to log in to her Facebook account, then rummaged through the girl's private information.

"What a violation of my daughter's privacy this whole episode was," Broviak said. The incident took "a huge toll on my daughter, who ended up crying through most of the rest of the day and therefore missed most of her classes. She was embarrassed and very upset."

There have been several descriptions lately of Facebook prying by schools – and one lawsuit was filed recently by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of an anonymous plaintiff against a school district that allegedly demanded a student’s social media passwords. But Broviak may be the first parent to go public with concerns about what she sees as serious violations of student privacy.

In a conversation with msnbc.com, Broviak said she confronted school officials about the incident involving her daughter soon after it occurred last fall and was told that they routinely investigate student issues by asking kids to log into their social networking pages -- or cellphones -- in the presence of administrators. And she said her daughter and other students told her they are frequently called into the principal’s office and told that they can’t leave until they surrender their passwords or unlock their phones and allow school officials to browse their personal information.

"(Students) let them see the accounts because otherwise, they are not allowed to leave the room. And that is just wrong," she said.

Kent Mutchler, superintendent of Geneva schools, said in an interview with msnbc.com that he couldn't comment on Broviak’s daughter because privacy rules prevent him from publicly discussing an individual student’s situation. But he said Broviak's description of district policy is inaccurate.

"We would never demand someone's password. When you have someone's password, you open yourself up to other issues," Mutchler said. "But if we have a disruptive situation, a school (official) will ask to see the page, and if the student refuses, we call the parents."

But principals only request access to students' social media pages under extreme circumstances, Mutchler said.

"There are different levels of concern. If there is a drug trafficking suspicion, we'll get the police involved. If it's something like cyberbullying, we'll say, 'This has been reported to us,' and ask to see the page," he said.

Often, students volunteer before they are even asked, he said.

"We ask, 'Is there something you want to show us?' that sort of thing. And they volunteer," he said. 

Such incidents are very rare among district middle schools, he said, contradicting Broviak's assertion that the inspections are commonplace. 

"It happens a half-dozen to a dozen times per year," he said.

Broviak's public complaint comes at a time when schools, employers and lawmakers around the country are wrestling with sticky privacy issues surrounding social networks. The state Legislature in Illinois is considering legislation that would make it illegal for employers to demand access to workers’ or applicants’ private social media information. That law is silent on the issue of schools and social media snooping, but federal legislation introduced last month by Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., would extend the protections to students, too.

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Broviak said she didn't think school officials should ever look at a child's personal social media page or cellphone without first contacting parents.

"It's just wrong for them to do this, but parents are afraid to talk about it, because they are worried, 'Are they going to target my kid?'" she said.

Additionally, she said, looking at a kids' social media page violates an entire family's privacy, even if school officials don’t intend to look at posts involving other family members.

"The whole family is exposed in this," she said. "Some families communicate through Facebook. What if her aunt was going through a divorce or had an illness? And now there's these anonymous people reading through this information."

When the first incident occurred in the fall, Broviak said she didn't know what to do -- and initially chose to let it drop for fear that complaining might make things worse for her daughter. But she said reports from her daughter that other kids have been treated the same way and a recent spate of news stories surrounding the issue pushed her to speak up. Three weeks ago she published a detailed accounting of events on her personal blog, and this week agreed to be interviewed by msnbc.com.

"It's really important for people to talk about this and know what's going on," she said. "And I'm really glad that the state Legislature and Congress are considering laws to deal with this."

Her daughter, meanwhile, has learned an important but sad lesson through this experience, Broviak said.

"It's taught her to use better judgment with adults," she said. "Basically, what (they) showed her was you can’t trust anyone. Her trust in and the respect of the adults at her school has been shattered to the point that she is struggling to look beyond this abuse and allow for the education process to occur."

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A 12-year-old Minnesota girl was reduced to tears while school officials and a police officer rummaged through her private Facebook postings after forcing her to surrender her password, an ACLU lawsuit alleges. 

The claims are the latest in a string of tales showing that even password-protected, private online activities might not be safe from curious government agencies and schools. (See last week’s story)

The girl, whose identity is withheld in the lawsuit, came home "crying, depressed, angry, scared and embarrassed" after she was intimidated into divulging her login information by a school counselor and a deputy sheriff, who arrived in uniform, armed with a Taser, the lawsuit alleges.

"(The student now) fears that the school could make her give up her passwords at a moment's notice, at any time, for any reason," the lawsuit claims.  It also alleges that password prying is standard practice at the Minnewaska Middle School, which the student still attends. "(Officials) have compelled other students to disclose their private information and have accessed students' online accounts on multiple occasions," it states.

Officials at the Minnewaska Area School District -- which is about 125 miles northwest of Minneapolis -- say the ACLU's version of events is "one-sided," and that the school acted to "prevent disruption," according to a statement e-mailed to msnbc.com by Superintendent Gregory Ohl. 

"The district is confident that once all the facts come to light, the district's conduct will be found to be reasonable and appropriate," it said.  

When asked if the district has obtained other students’ login information, he responded, “We feel this is not accurate.”

The lawsuit raises the complicated -- and quite unsettled -- legal quandary that balances students' constitutional rights with schools' needs to maintain order and a positive educational environment. For example, can schools punish students who publicly criticize school officials on their own time using social networks?

Federal district courts have handed down contradictory decisions on that issue. Facing a chance to settle the matter, the U.S. Supreme Court in January declined to hear three cases on the issue.

But private social media criticism, intended only for a limited audience behind a password or a privacy wall, raises a different legal issue, said Teresa Nelson, a lawyer for the ACLU in Minnesota.  

"The notion that it was a search of her private Facebook content ... the Fourth Amendment applies," she said.  "The government has to have a really good reason to do that kind of search," and would need a court order in most cases, she said.

Monitor 'was mean to me'
According to the ACLU's version of events, the girl had moved and entered a new school as a 6th-grade student in the fall of 2010. In early 2011, she felt targeted by a school monitor and posted an update to her friends-only Facebook wall saying she "hated" the monitor because "she was mean to me," using her own computer and while off campus.

Soon after, she was called into the principal's office -- he had obtained a screen shot of the post -- and given detention.

The student subsequently posted another update to her page related to the incident: "I want to know who the f%$# told on me," the complaint says. Again, she was called to the principal's office, and this time was suspended for "insubordination" and banned from a class ski trip.

In March, the student had a second run-in with school authorities.  The parent of another student had complained that the girl was talking about sex with that student.  The 12-year-old was called out of class by a school counselor and eventually brought into a room with several school officials and the sheriff's deputy, where the password demands began.

The ACLU claims that the school never asked the girl's parents for permission to examine her private Facebook space. The school district doesn't dispute that it obtained the girl's password, but does say it had parental permission.

"Any viewing of (the student's) Facebook account was done with the express consent of her parents," it said in the statement to msnbc.com.

In the First Amendment fight over online criticism related to school, districts and parents are relying on legal interpretations of an outdated 1969 Supreme Court decision knows as “Tinker,” which gives students wide latitude to criticize.  That decision famously gave us the phrase, "Students don't shed their constitutional rights at the school house gates."  The opinion offers little guidance about rights on the other side of a firewall or a Facebook password, however.

The Tinker case basically found that students can say what they want as long as the speech doesn't cause a disruption at school.  But can a school's ability to punish students extend to activity conducted entirely off school grounds?

Dozens of cases over the last decade have failed to hash out the online version of this debate.  In one, a Pennsylvania student who was suspended for making a MySpace page that mocked a principal was granted a reprieve because the U.S. Court of Appeals found it wasn't disruptive. In another, a West Virginia student's suspension was upheld after she created a MySpace page where students were encouraged to discuss if a fellow classmate had herpes. 

Legal confusion
Even though the National School Boards Association asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear appeals on these two cases in an attempt to break what seems like a legal tie, the nation's top court demurred, leaving behind a lot of legal confusion.

"Things are complicated," said the ACLU’s Nelson. "Kids have been criticizing school officials since there have been school officials. ... If kids had been venting about teachers at McDonald's no one would care."

One important distinction noted by Nelson: While she believes demands for a student's Facebook password were a clear Fourth Amendment violation, there's no constitutional issue raised by a school official learning about a private communication that's volunteered by another student. In other words, students' private Facebook chatter is only as private as the participants make it.

The ACLU of Minnesota offers a rights handbook to students who use social media. While it's specifically applicable only to Minnesota law, its principles are universal.

The pamphlet notes that while school officials in most cases cannot force students to reveal their Facebook login information, officials can search for evidence of violations "if they have reasonable individualized suspicion" about an ongoing violation of school rules. 

And while free speech rights may prevent schools from banning students from classes because of non-disruptive but critical Facebook posts, those legal protections do not extend to extracurricular activities. In other words, football players and math club members can be kicked off their squads for anything a school official deems against policy.

It's important to note that while Facebook's terms of service say members cannot give out their passwords or otherwise allow others to view private areas of their accounts. But those same terms say members must be 13 years old to join.

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