Social media has become a popular way for students at the J-School to express themselves during the academic year. Just as the school teaches journalism students (through Skills courses) and professionals (through Continuing Education programs) ways of using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ in their reporting, writing and production work, it’s important that the school offer guidelines for the proper use of social media within an academic institution.

These guidelines are not meant to curb the ability or rights of students to speak their minds or to opine about the state of the school. Each year, students use websites, blogs and newspapers to discuss the school and its various activities. We are not offering any guidelines about those platforms, which have been used by students for a decade and more.

Instead, we want to focus attention on the newer, more immediate and more rapidly shared services like Twitter and Facebook. Unlike other media forms where conventions and standards have evolved over the years, social media usage -- and its ramifications -- are still evolving and being understood.

Over the last two years, there have been several instances where a single tweet or Facebook posting has upset guest speakers, professors and students. Sometimes, the issue lies with simple miscommunication --  a tweet taking something out of context or a tweet that takes some speculation and makes it sound like a fact, spreading misinformation widely. More often, the issue is that material that was intended to be private gets shared with the public, without permission from the speaker or professor or student. That’s why these guidelines have been created.

Here’s a tweetable summary of a good approach to social media: “What’s common sense in real life is common sense in social media.”

These guidelines are meant to be, like social media itself, a work-in-progress. As new services and functionalities emerge, and as circumstances warrant, we will revisit these guidelines.

CLASS: The school believes that the classes ought to be a “safe place," where students and professors can speak their minds, have strong opinions and ask questions without having to worry that what they say will be made public. In order to preserve the best learning environment, we don’t want to stifle open and candid discussions that take place in a class. If a student wants to quote from a class, he or she should seek permission before publishing, in any platform. In a few, rare cases, professors encourage tweeting in their class. But even then the same guideline applies: Fellow students and faculty members shouldn’t be quoted without permission.

As of August 2012, this paragraph will be added to the Academic Discipline form all incoming students sign:

"I understand that J-School classes are learning environments where students and teachers must freely be able to speak their minds, express strong opinions, play devil’s advocate, and ask questions without having to worry that what they say will be made public; therefore, I may not tweet, post Facebook updates, blog about or otherwise publish the remarks, questions, statements or actions of anyone in class without their express and specific permission. (Of course, I am free to express my own ideas about class topics in any form I wish.) Individual professors reserve the right to waive or adjust the guidelines about social-media use at their discretion for their own classes."

GUEST SPEAKERS: Guest speakers are an integral part of our teaching environment and should be accorded the same courtesies that we give to faculty members and students. 

Professors and administrators organizing public talks in the Lecture Hall or World Room (as opposed to specific classes) will be encouraged to allow social media use, but it is up to them individually to do so.

It’s always good to clarify with the person introducing the speaker if the speaker is comfortable with his or her comments going out on social media. We have learned over the years that a speaker who finds the audience is more interested in live tweeting the remarks than listening to what he or she has to say is less likely to be candid and forthcoming about the expertise we wanted to showcase in the first place. If you do tweet a speaker’s public remarks, please track down the speaker’s Twitter handle and event hashtag, if available.

INFORMAL CONVERSATION: The concept of “informed consent” is useful in thinking about what to tweet and when. Students should seek permission from anyone they plan to quote or name in a Facebook or Twitter post. We have had cases where a student takes a professor’s informal, non-course related conversation and tweets it, without seeking permission from the professor in advance. The professor, unaware that he/she has been quoted publicly, then has to answer for something he/she didn’t intend to be public in the first place. Same is true for informal conversation among students.

ISSUES WITH THE BUILDING, EQUIPMENT, ETC: Some students, when they find an issue with the physical infrastructure of the school, choose to tweet or Facebook about the issue, instead of using the more relevant systems (emails and specific web-reporting pages) that will get faster results. Here are the services you should use when you want to report a problem in the building:

Building/infrastructure: building@jrn.columbia.edu
Technology issues: http://help.jrn.columbia.edu
Student Services/Student Life: dos@jrn.columbia.edu
Brad's Cafe: columbia@bradsbrew.com

CONNECTING WITH FACULTY AND ADMINISTRATORS: Email and in-person conversations remain the best ways to interact with members of the faculty and administration. Some professors and administrators welcome social-media connections with students and others do not. It is safest to wait until after graduation to make such connection requests. Until you get to know a professor/administrator (and know that he/she welcomes such connections), it’s probably best that you do not send him/her a friend request on Facebook. LinkedIn, on the other hand, being more work-oriented, is perhaps a safer bet for connecting with professors/administrators, if you have to. In either case, please do not follow up if a professor chooses to ignore your request. Public Twitter feeds of faculty members do not require permission to connect (here is a list of 45+ Twitter feeds of professors and staff at the J-School).

MISTAKES OR FALSE STATEMENTS IN SOCIAL MEDIA: Please correct any errors immediately on the original platform and issue an apology

RESOURCES:
List of 195+ Twitter feeds of current students
Search results for #cuj12
List of 45+ Twitter feeds of professors and staff at the J-school

FURTHER READING:
What journalists need to know about libelous tweets -- Poynter.org
Social Media Guide and Tips from Career Services
Sree Sreenivasan’s Social Media Guide
Syllabus for Social Media Skills (SMS)