{"id":62097,"date":"2016-01-18T06:47:39","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T04:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/why-universities-should-start-taking-social-media-far-more-seriously-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2016-01-18T06:47:39","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T04:47:39","slug":"why-universities-should-start-taking-social-media-far-more-seriously-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/why-universities-should-start-taking-social-media-far-more-seriously-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Why universities should start taking social media far more seriously | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com\/files\/107733\/width496\/image-20160111-7002-1f0beka.jpg\" \/><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Social media can benefit or harm universities \u2013 and it must be carefully managed.<\/span> <span class=\"attribution\"><span class=\"source\">Shutterstock<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Social media is a risky space. Many people have learned this the hard way \u2013 2016 began with several South Africans losing their jobs after making racist comments on Facebook and Twitter. Social media has also been used to expose people who hold racist views.<\/p>\n<p>These incidents are a reminder that organisations increasingly need to create procedures and practices to manage their reputations. Employers must understand the risks involved as they and their stakeholders set out to engage with the wider community on social media. For universities, this risk is extended to staff and students who are associated with or formally linked to an institution.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, the University of Pretoria suffered a serious backlash when two of their students donned \u201cblackface\u201d for a costume party and posted photographs of themselves online. They were charged with bringing the university into disrepute.<\/p>\n<p>We have conducted research \u2013 due to be published soon \u2013 that shows South Africa\u2019s higher education institutions should take this issue more seriously. Most universities don\u2019t have formal social media policies. Some don\u2019t seem to have considered social media as a potential risk to their reputation at all.<\/p>\n<h2>Formal policies are rare<\/h2>\n<p>Our research involved 23 of South Africa\u2019s 25 public universities. The aim was to investigate whether they had social media policies at all and how they generally managed social media. The results show that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>91% of universities don\u2019t have formal social media policies;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>four universities were in the process of approving draft social media policies. These were not available for us to examine at the time of the study; and<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>61% don\u2019t have any formal document that manages social media.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We were able to obtain nine documents \u2013 social media policies, guidelines or strategies \u2013 for analysis. Here are the key findings from those documents:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>44% focus on social media only as a risk to the institution. 33% focus on it as both a risk and a relationship-building tool, while 22% focus on it only as a tool for building relationships;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>most of the documents refer to \u201cbrand\u201d and \u201cimage\u201d. Just 22% focus on brand, image and reputation;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>56% referred directly to disciplinary action for those who transgress the guidelines within the document; and<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>67% offered both professional and personal guidelines in the use of social media.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Universities need to understand the important role played by social media in their corporate strategies to obtain optimal results for sustained growth and development.<\/p>\n<h2>Reputation is everyone\u2019s problem<\/h2>\n<p>The next step was to learn how universities without formally adopted policies manage their social media activities and reputation. We interviewed one person from  each of 11 universities to gain deeper insight into their approach to social media. The questions also explored how universities used social media other than for marketing functions.<\/p>\n<p>The responses suggest that universities know they must develop social media policies to address risk-related issues. But most don\u2019t see that policies should also be used to harness the potential advantages offered by social media. These include as a space for recruitment, sharing research or crisis management.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, universities are very focused on organisational reputation as a branding issue \u2013 and they believe reputation is the ambit of a communication or marketing department rather than any other unit or group.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the case. Employees and students need to be aware that although they are using social media in a personal capacity, they may appear to represent a university. They are recognised as an employee or student of that university, and their social media utterances can damage the institution\u2019s reputation or perhaps enhance the reputation.<\/p>\n<h2>It\u2019s time to get proactive<\/h2>\n<p>Universities in South Africa have neglected the development of social media policies until now. They may not yet have experienced the need for a formal management system. This is because communications teams still tend to be the ones dealing with crises or instances of bad behaviour on social media.<\/p>\n<p>But mistakes of any kind on social media result in reputational, legal and ethical issues. The abuse or misuse of social media relationships has consequences.<\/p>\n<p>It is time for universities to be proactive and get systems in place to manage these risks. This can be done by formulating and implementing social media policies and management systems for their institutions.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The Conversation\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.edu.au\/content\/52990\/count.gif\" width=\"1\" \/> <\/p>\n<p><em><span>Miemie Struwig&#39;s student and co-Author to this article received funding for her PHD studies on which this article is based from the NRF.  <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span>Amanda van den Berg and supervisor Prof Stuwig (co-author) received funding from NRF and RCD NMMU for this study. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>\n<strong> Read more on:<\/strong> <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/why-universities-should-start-taking-social-media-far-more-seriously-52990\">The Conversation \u2013 Articles (AFRICA)<\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more on <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Conversation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Join the fun:<\/strong> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/add-your-event\/\">Add Your event<\/a> | <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mypr.co.za\/submit\">Submit a Press Release<\/a> | <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/directory\/\">Add your listing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Social media can benefit or harm universities \u2013 and it must be carefully managed. Shutterstock Social media is a risky space. Many people have learned this the hard way \u2013 2016 began with several South Africans losing their jobs after making racist comments on Facebook and Twitter. Social media has also been used to expose [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[8890,636,3432,7463,4017,3527,2366,7462,7763],"class_list":{"0":"post-62097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa-news-2","7":"tag-conversation","8":"tag-media","9":"tag-more","10":"tag-seriously","11":"tag-should","12":"tag-social","13":"tag-start","14":"tag-taking","15":"tag-universities","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}