As with most tools, common sense is the main rule with Social Media
Search the blogosphere and you’ll find all sorts of advice about the ‘right’ way to use Social Media. Some of it’s rubbish and some of it’s worthwhile but the one hard and fast rule to remember is: “Use Your Common Sense”. That might seem obvious but news reports this weekend highlighted two cases of people who might not have lost their jobs if they had just stopped to think.
1. A Swiss woman lost her job after being noticed using Facebook at home despite telling her employers she was too ill with migraine to look work at a computer screen.
Anyone using Facebook for more than ten minutes knows that your presence online is obvious thanks to its Chat module. If you’re going to lie to your employers it makes sense to cover your tracks! As the social tools we use share increasingly specific information about what we’re doing (from online presence to physical location) learning how to turn those indicators off at the right time is important.
The BBC reports that the sacked woman claims she was actually using Facebook from her iPhone in bed and that her employers had set up a fake online personality to befriend her on the service and spy on her. If that’s true it’s an interesting development in employers’ battles with their staff’s use of Social Media but surely it’s common sense to remember that anything you publish online is public whether you like it or not.
Facebook might seem like a safe, walled garden for you and your friends but this case shows just how easy it is to slip up. If you really want to express yourself in a way that you think might get you into trouble maybe a secret identity is a better option?
2. A magistrate resigned after a complaint was filed over his use of Twitter to report on court cases. Steve Molyneux claims he was simply using new technology to make court proceedings more transparent. An honourable goal but surely common sense would tell him to clear that with his superiors first?
There’s a reason journalists covering court cases need specific training first. One wrong word can ruin the whole trial. It seems Mr Molyneux was aware of this and took care with what he wrote but there’s no denying that a magistrate reporting on a trial they’re involved in is on pretty shaky ground.
Molyneux has posted a comment on this blog post by Guy Clapperton. He argues that “This raised the whole issue of Citizen Journalism versus ‘professional’ journalism. I would much rather have someone from within the justice system tweeting the ‘Facts’ rather than what could happen if ‘unofficial’ tweet channels were to inadvertently misrepresent the truth”.
He has a point – citizen journalists don’t always have the experience and skills required for fair and balanced reporting. The problem with his argument is that it is surely better for either a trained court reporter or a person officially designated by the court to do this than a magistrate who was involved in the case doing it off his own back. The way Mr Molyneux reported sat in a grey area somewhere between officialdom and citizen journalism. It wasn’t necessarily wrong, it just feels wrong to have a Magistrate act this way.
Would you start tweeting on behalf of your employer without asking first? It certainly wouldn’t be advisable. A much better move would be to convince your bosses of the benefits tools like Twitter can offer. If they don’t ‘get’ it that’s their problem but they’re unlikely to look favourably on you if you go ahead and tweet on their behalf anyway.
[Image credit: Analog Weapon on Flickr]
