Facing Your Fear: Social Media Won’t Destroy You
The number one question I get asked time and again: how do we respond to negative behavior or comments on our institutional social media or the external platforms our students might be on? In many ways, this question feels like a deal breaker—if I get it wrong, I often wonder if I’m giving someone a reason to not engage in social media. Usually, the people asking the question have the best of intentions—they are often stuck between the rock of what their audiences are demanding and the hard place of just how far their institutions are willing to go.
We’ve all heard social media horror stories, some true, some not-so-true. What is true is that generally, you will face much less negativity than you think. Typically, social sites that draw the most vociferous users are controversial in the first place, like political or special issue blogs like Atlas Shrugs. And just as typically, the smallest percentage of community members are the ones causing trouble… usually, somewhere in the neighborhood of one percent of your current and most active users.
Still, nobody likes confronting trouble, and by engaging in what is essentially an open platform, you do run the risk of attracting the occasional difficult customer. In spite of what you’ve heard, embracing social media does not mean you have to live with bad behavior or potentially damaging comments. Here are some simple steps to take:
1. Determine just what constitutes unacceptable behavior or negative comments. This is not always as easy as it sounds. While certain comments will be immediately unacceptable, some will be valid or justifiable criticism. These you should always respond to in a constructive way.
2. Respond to negative comments that have valid complaints. While you can’t control what people say on your network, you can influence the conversation.
3. Let the community come to your defense. It’s surprising how often and well social communities police themselves.
4. Create an easy to access policy page on unacceptable behavior somewhere on your network. Facebook, the gold standard of social networks, has one and you can find it here on their Safety and Privacy page. Many institutions are taking a page from Facebook and creating policy pages of their own—DePaul University has one worth looking at. Stanford’s and Texas A&M’s pages have equally good policy pages. It’s a common, generally accepted practice—even the Obama White House page has one.
5. Establish a procedure for noting and handling unacceptable behavior. What precise steps will you take when dealing with negative incidents and how do those steps progress? What will make them progress? Elon’s E^2 community uses a system that enables users to flag troublesome conversation or comments.
6. Remember that you are the final arbiter of these things. You don’t have to allow troublemakers to continue to cause trouble on your platforms, but be sure you have defined just what constitutes a troublemaker. You can delete unacceptable content and bar troublesome users from your community. This is particularly true when your social network is proprietary.
When under fire on yours or other platforms, it’s always better to respond quickly and regularly. Be honest and clear and consider using humor as a way to deflect tension when appropriate. And always respond on the platforms in which you’ve been attacked.
Enough from me on this subject. I’m sure that many of you have much better examples of the ways you’ve dealt with negative incidents on your social platforms. What kinds of worthwhile policies and practices have you found or are putting in place?
Photo by fabian wolf
