Social media platforms wield a double-edged sword. While the ability to disseminate information quickly to a wide-reaching number of people is incredibly useful, we also know that conversations on social media more and more often turn toxic and verbally abusive.
For schools using social media, this fact cannot be ignored.
In fact, having a social media presence is no longer optional for educational institutions. A hefty majority of internet users, including students and parents, use social media. It is often the first and primary point of contact between school administrations and the communities they serve. Educational institutions also use social platforms to garner positive attention, drive engagement, and promote collaboration.
Reliance on social media, however, comes with risks related to safety, compliance, and accountability.
So how do schools avoid these risks?
Can monitoring school social media help administrations reduce the associated vulnerabilities?
This article explores how monitoring and archiving social media can help schools reduce risk, enhance transparency, and stay compliant.
Why Monitoring School Social Media Matters
Before the internet and social media became mainstream, interpersonal communication between schools and parents (or students) looked quite different.
Back then, schools faced fewer compliance bottlenecks and legal challenges.
That changed when social media became a primary mode of communication for schools, allowing students and parents to freely interact with posts. They could seek information, express opinions, and share suggestions.
But administrators quickly learned they had to exercise caution while sharing information or interacting with parents and students online. Even unintentional misinformation or misrepresentation could have potential legal ramifications.
The concept of social media monitoring has become increasingly relevant over the years. In today's environment, social media monitoring is essential for schools. It plays a key role in:
1. Protecting Students and Staff
Safeguarding the well-being of students and staff members is the school’s duty. Social media interactions fall under that umbrella of responsibility.
Why?
While social media enables (and often encourages) spontaneous communication, it is also a largely unregulated space. Schools are not in a position to predict the misuse or abuse of these shared forums by external parties who may visit their online profiles.
However, administrators can monitor social media to ensure that:
- No member of the staff or the student body faces cyberbullying, discrimination, or harassment on the school’s profile pages or posts.
- Publicly shared information, in official and unofficial capacities, is not misleading, misattributed, or unauthorized.
- The language on its official channels is not inappropriate, derogatory, or defamatory.
- Sensitive personal data pertaining to students or staff is not inadvertently disclosed.
- The school’s social media usage policies are being followed.
Real-time social media monitoring enables prompt intervention and can prevent potential disputes or misuse from escalating.
2. Social Media Monitoring Protects School Reputations
Multiple real-life instances of schools and students appearing in controversial social media posts have led to serious consequences. When schools are proactively monitoring social media, potentially damaging posts or comments can be removed swiftly and corrective action can be taken immediately.
One such incident involved Anthony Talvacchio, a former student at New Jersey’s Egg Harbor Township High School. When Talvacchio posted a music video that was allegedly filmed inside the school premises, the authorities flagged it as unauthorized social media content. The music video included profanity, showed teens playing dice, and had some hand gestures that were similar to shooting guns.
Although the video was posted on the student’s personal social media account, the school considered it a misrepresentation of its public image and suspended Talvacchio for 10 days.
3. Maintaining Compliance
Ethical considerations aside, schools must keep records of their social media presence to maintain regulatory compliance with federal and state open records laws.
Because educational institutions are government-funded institutions, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) does apply. Schools also need to comply with other common open records mandates, like the Federal Education Records and Privacy Act (FERPA) and state-specific sunshine laws.
Anyone, including parents, students, or even other agencies, can submit a FOIA request. Schools have not been immune to the steady increase in FOIA requests in recent years. Whether or not schools have the resources to properly respond to these requests, they are still beholden to the public. Without social media recordkeeping, they are risking non-compliance and an inability to respond to FOIA enquiries. They may even lose funding for critical violations.
Beyond risks of non-compliance, being unable to respond to open records requests can lead to PR crises and reputational damage.
The Role of Social Media Monitoring Tools
On social media, every story, post, comment, and reply is traceable. Even if content containing false or misleading claims is removed, its digital footprint persists.
So how can school administrators crisis-proof themselves in the age of social media?
In short, by adopting tools that balance compliance recordkeeping with best practices for social media monitoring.
Archiving and Recordkeeping
A non-negotiable feature of an effective social media monitoring tool is the ability to retain and archive content.
Monitoring without archiving is not particularly effective.
If administrators are unable to search, locate, and produce relevant social media records during internal audits or external FOIA requests, schools risk non-compliance. They also risk non-compliance if archived data is not preserved in a tamper-proof format, ensuring the authenticity of the records.
Social media archiving tools can significantly reduce these risks. Proper archiving of social media records ensure that all records are authentic, accessible, and producible in compliant, legally-defensible formats.
Benefits of Monitoring and Archiving School Social Media
In addition to staying compliant, institutions that monitor school social media and adhere to archiving best practices will see major efficiency benefits.
Instead of scouring the internet to retrieve old or deleted posts, monitoring and archiving tools help school officials locate, review, and produce records in minutes using specific keywords or dates.
They can track the iterations a post or comment has undergone, and even capture posts before they get deleted with automation. And full-text search allows them to find all records pertaining to a particular topic or containing specific keywords.
Setting up automatic keyword alerts can help catch misuse of the platform or leaked information in real-time, helping to keep students and the school safe.
Most schools will not be able to dedicate many staff to information retrieval.
Manual monitoring and recordkeeping are incredibly time-consuming, and most schools don’t have resources to spare on these kinds of tasks. Without automated software to monitor and archive social media posts, schools can face significant delays in surfacing problematic posts, manually capturing records, and producing records as needed.
In short, social media monitoring and archiving offers:
- Safety for the school and students
- Automated open records compliance
- Improved transparency and reputation management
- Reduction in costs associated with manual archiving and recordkeeping
- A culture rooted in proactivity and accountability
- Reduced legal and compliance risks
Best Practices of Monitoring School Social Media
Following best practices can help educational institutions ensure social media monitoring is effective and efficient.
Here are some best practices to consider:
1. Develop Robust Social Media Policies
Schools can lay the groundwork for effective social media monitoring by creating a set of policies that prioritize compliance and student safety. The policies must clearly communicate the purpose of social media monitoring so stakeholders are aware of the policies’ purpose. Use this opportunity to also train staff on how data is collected and stored.
2. Use Social Listening Tools
Social media users cut across nearly every demographic. Nearly 40% of children ages 8-12 use social media. A solid majority— 68.7%—of internet users are active on social media platforms. Children and adult users are bound to encounter each other on social media at some point, and that presents a potential problem for schools.
Because there are no real interactive barriers between users of different age groups, children are vulnerable to online abuse from peers and adults. Even staff members are not exempt from bad actors.
The right tools can help you predict and flag problematic interactions using built-in keyword monitoring. Employing social media listening tools that also track sentiment can prove useful. Monitoring an extensive list of hot topics, abusive language, or language with negative sentiment can help you automatically detect negative tones or potentially unsafe word usage and keep a close watch on potentially abusive exchanges.
3. Encourage Awareness and Training
Once policies are implemented, communicate them as clearly as possible to stakeholders. Explain the policy and hold group discussions to address queries. Ensure everyone is aligned with the overarching social media monitoring policies and practices.
Even if the majority of employees will never have a hand in the school’s social media presence, awareness of archiving practices, along with general conduct guidelines, helps foster an environment of compliance and cooperation.
The Bottom Line
Social media is a critical communication channel for schools. As students and parents demand greater accessibility and interaction with educational institutions, social channels are the best vehicles to meet the moment.
Simply put, schools no longer have a choice—online communication is the norm in a digital world.
The fast-paced and ephemeral conditions of social media, however, do not give schools a pass to overlook compliance risks related to these platforms.
Instead, school administrators can focus on using social media in positive ways while adhering to regulatory guidelines and fostering accountability at every level of the administration. After all, social media exchanges are public records if they originate from or come into contact with official school accounts. As a result, monitoring and archiving are essential for compliance with federal laws.
This makes proper monitoring and archiving practices essential for school management.
Schools can fulfill their social media monitoring and archiving duties by leveraging sentiment analysis, automated alerts, and secure recordkeeping. They can respond quickly to potential issues, maintain transparency, and provide a safe environment for discussion and engagement.
