[Editors] Universities start to audit depts' social media

[Andrew Whitacre]

http://chronicle.com/article/Worried-About-Message/141773/

Aside from the legal and academic-freedom-of-expression points in this article, it's interesting that they think the biggest issue is around poorly used/tended-to accounts...

> "Our institution has launched new reporting requirements for all NIU social-media accounts that are, to put it mildly, onerous to the point of ludicrous," Ms. Thomas wrote on her personal blog. "They want us to count all interactions. And document whether they are positive, negative, or neutral. They want screen shots to document all of our counting and downloaded analytics. Every. Month."


[…]

> "An even greater risk might be to ignore social media—not review it, just let it go on, let everyone go out there and set up Facebook and Twitter and YouTube accounts," Ms. Schultz added. "If we're not engaged in a strategic way, that's a risk to the university in meeting our strategic goals."


[…]

> Enhanced oversight, he noted, could have unintended negative consequences beyond irritating account managers. "If you do monitor and you fail to catch something, you may have doubled down on your liability," he said.
> 
> Mr. McDonald pointed out that the need to balance engagement and freedom of expression with institutional responsibility and risk isn't new. "Every time we have a new one of these tools, people tend to think that it's unregulated and it's kind of the Wild West," he said. "But that's not the case. We've had standards that apply across the board for years and decades and centuries, and the medium doesn't really matter."
> 
> For instance, libel is libel, whether it's in a department's Xeroxed newsletter or on its Web site. "It's the behavior that's regulated, not the medium," Mr. McDonald said. "The problem is it's much easier to notice on the Internet."

Andrew Whitacre
Communications Director
cmsw.mit.edu | civic.mit.edu | gamelab.mit.edu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(617) 324-0490
awhit at mit.edu

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