2.1 Finding the rules
The emergence of Social Media Policy guidance across the HE sector is a guide to how seriously the issue of misconduct in use of social media is now taken by universities. It is also a reflection of emerging concerns and an acceptance that, even in these ‘third spaces’, students’ educational experiences can be profoundly impacted and that students therefore required counsel in their use (Smith and Lambert, 2014).
Each institution will have created its own set of rules; as Stoller (2017) suggests the tone of Social Media policies reveals much about the organisational culture. For example, The Open University now has formal policies that provides guidance for how staff and students should conduct themselves in social media spaces.
It is important that you are able to find the policies for your own institution.
Activity 4 Social media policies
Find the Social Media Policy for your institution. You can do this by searching for social media guidelines on either .edu or .ac.uk domains; a lot of results appear.
Spend a short amount of time reading the core issues that are mentioned in your policy- did any of them surprise you?
Comment
One of the things that most often surprises students is although some universities also have additional staff policies, these rules typically apply equally to the behaviour of staff and students and apply to all forms of social media.
In addition, these policies usually set out the expectation that when using social media, you must remember that often regulations and policies that apply to behaviour online in the same way as they would in a physical space.
While there are lots of individual variations in social media policies, there are also some commonalities. In the next section you will cover some of the most common violations of social media policies