2014 University of Texas and Sociology Department Social Media Guidelines
Both the University of Texas at Austin and the UT Sociology Department have developed best
practices for using social media in the academic context. It is important to remain aware that
your professional reputation will be affected by the many ways in which you choose to
represent yourself in the public sphere. This is even more important as you represent the
department by contributing to the blog or by tweeting @UTAustinSOC.
UT Austin Social Media Guidelines
Sociology Department Social Media Guidelines
UT Austin Social Media Guidelines
Source: Social Media Collaborative @UT (www.utexas.edu/know/directory/guidelines)
We believe it is important for all University of Texas at Austin units, faculty, staff and students
to be aware of social media and how social technologies can help you create and nurture
relationships, share information, advance knowledge, raise awareness, build support,
participate in important conversations and collaborate on new ideas.
Whether you’re a faculty member using social media as a part of the classroom experience or a
staff member who’s been charged with the exciting task of growing a social media presence for
an administrative unit, you’ll find these guidelines helpful in navigating the quickly evolving
world of social technologies.
Guiding Principles for Engaging with Social Media
University Communications at UT Austin wants to help all university staff, faculty, students, as
well as our Web visitors, engage in social media, blogs, social networks and the online
community. University Communications offers these additional best practices for engaging in
social media.
Respect and Ethics
At UT Austin we encourage different viewpoints and opinions, and as a participant in social
media, you should, too. Be respectful of others’ viewpoints. If you disagree and would like to
engage in a conversation, do so cordially, logically and ethically. As always, the university’s code
of ethics applies, even in the realm of social media and online networks. Keep in mind that
there is no such thing as a “private” social media Web site. What you write from your home
computer may follow you to school or work.
Accuracy and Honesty
Write about your areas of expertise, research or study at UT Austin. If you are writing about a
topic related to the university, or research conducted at the university, but you are not the inhouse expert on the topic, make this clear to your readers and check the facts before you post.
If there is a Web site you used to gather facts, provide the link for your readers to show
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accountability. Also, always write in the first person. Your unique voice contributes to the
overall message of the university. If you make a mistake, admit it. Your followers will be more
willing to forgive and forget if you are up front and quick with your correction. Maintain a high
level of quality that exhibits superior grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Value and Interest
When posting to your blog, Twitter or Facebook, ask yourself if your content adds value and
interest to the discussion. Make sure your comment, post or tweet is a valued piece of
information. If your insight helps people improve knowledge or skills, discover something
interesting, solve problems, or better understand The University of Texas at Austin, more than
likely you are adding value. There are millions of people, companies and universities on the
Web. If you want to stand above the clutter, make sure you provide content that is exciting,
engaging and stimulating.
Personality
In the social media realm, you are encouraged to use your own voice and bring your personality
to the forefront. The Web is a venue that is relaxed, open and diverse–embrace it. A voice that
is over-institutionalized and rehearsed can repel your audience. Make sure your site is not a
place for self-promotion. Some social media sites, such as Twitter, close down such sites.
Transparency and Disclosure
When communicating using social media or blogs–Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn,
Blogger, Word Press, or others–on behalf of UT Austin, or in your role as a university staff or
faculty member, make sure you clearly identify yourself and your affiliation with the university.
Being open about your ties to the university will illustrate credibility and transparency. Make
sure you have a formal disclosure that identifies your comments as your unique viewpoints. For
instance: “The posts on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent UT Austin’s
academic goals or opinions.” When writing for personal blogs or social networking sites, make
sure you disclose your affiliation with the university if you discuss university-related topics. This
will enhance credibility with your readers.
Social Media Guidelines
Whether you’re a faculty member using social media as a part of the classroom experience or a
staff member who’s been charged with the exciting task of growing a social media presence for
an administrative unit, you’ll find these guidelines helpful in navigating the quickly evolving
world of social technologies.
I. Introduction
a. The people of UT Austin make meaningful connections all over the world. Social technologies
on the Web make the excellent research, teaching and public service taking place at the
university even more accessible.
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We believe it is important for all university units, faculty, staff and students to be aware of
social media and how social technologies can help you create and nurture relationships,
share information, advance knowledge, raise awareness, build support, participate in
important conversations and collaborate on new ideas.
If we incorporate engaging with social media as a part of our overall communications about
the university, we can even more effectively tell the wonderful stories about our people,
places and programs, and support the university’s mission to improve the quality of life for
the people of Texas, the nation and the world.
We think social media simply provide fun and creative ways to interact with people you
might not otherwise hear from with more traditional tools.
b. Each college, school and unit –- and individual faculty and staff members –- at the university
should evaluate what, if any, social media technologies are appropriate for their
communication needs.
c. These guidelines are to ensure appropriate and effective use of social media. The guidelines
will evolve as social media evolve.
II. Guidelines For Faculty and Staff
a. These social media guidelines pertain to your professional interests as a faculty or staff
member of The University of Texas at Austin and how you represent the university and your
college, school or unit. This document doesn’t address publishing or regulating personal
content on privately maintained social media platforms.
b. Know and follow the institutional rules on speech and expression in the General Information
catalog, the university’s Web publishing guidelines, the Acceptable Use Policy for information
technology and the Web Privacy Policy.
Talk with your supervisor if you have questions about how these social media guidelines fit
with your unit’s communications plan, or if you have questions about the university-wide
policies referenced here.
c. You are personally responsible for the content you post on university-managed social media
properties – from blogs and microblogs to social networks, forums and other social media
platforms.
d. It’s important to be transparent to your audience when posting on behalf of the university
about work-related matters or other issues related to the university.
Be sure to identify yourself with your name and affiliation to the university when
contributing your personal comments and statements on a university-managed social media
property.
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Examples of disclosure methods could include @usernames that contain UT Austin and/or
your unit name, a link to a bio or “about me” page or a statement in the post itself, such as “I
work for UT Austin, and this is my personal opinion.”
Posts that don’t mention work-related topics won’t need to reference your university
relationship.
e. Follow copyright and fair use laws to the letter.
f. Be aware of and follow FERPA and students’ privacy, the Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act of 1974 protecting students’ personally identifiable information in educational
records.
g. Protect confidential or personal information from The University of Texas at Austin and of
students, faculty or staff members. If you have any questions about what constitutes classified
data, consult the Extended List of Category-I Data provided on the Information Technology
Services website.
h. Assume conversations about UT Austin are internal and private. Ask permission prior to
sharing these conversations via social media properties.
i. Always show respect. Don’t publish content containing slurs, personal insults or attacks,
profanity or obscenity, and don’t engage in any conduct on a social media site that would not
be acceptable in UT Austin workplaces or classrooms.
When maintaining or contributing to university-managed social media properties, we should
follow the same standards of nondiscrimination and social conduct as outlined by Equal
Opportunity Services at the university. We should also expect the same of our visitors to the
university’s social media outlets.
For more best practices about engaging with social media, consult the Guiding Principles for
Engaging with Social Media on the university’s Know Social Media Directory.
j. Be aware of your association with UT Austin in online social networks. Your profile and
content should be consistent in the manner you wish to present yourself to colleagues,
students, parents, alumni and others.
III. For Social Media Property/Community Managers
a. Follow the guidelines for Faculty and Staff found in Section II, Part 1 of this document.
b. Before debuting a social media initiative, you are encouraged to develop a social media
strategy that should be a part of your unit’s overall communications plan. This strategy should
be approved by your unit leader before releasing the social media property to the public.
A social media strategy first involves an assessment of your 1) communication goals and
objectives, 2) audience needs and interests, and 3) maintenance and content creation
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resources, and whether a given social media technology is even an appropriate channel to
meet those three essential needs.
Based on that evaluation, if your unit decides to pursue using a social media platform, the
strategy you create should reflect five key areas:
1. Listening: Find and monitor the conversations already taking place in the social media
sphere about the university, your unit and your subject of interest.
2. Influencing: Identify and follow key influencers in your target subject of interest and
learn what they find valuable in the social media realm.
3. Engaging: Develop creative ways to provide value to your audiences through exclusive
content, offers, advice, multimedia and more on your social media sites.
4. Converting: Persuade your audiences to act on behalf of the university and your unit,
whether it’s for information sharing or relationship building or through their influence,
time or money.
5. Measuring: Ensure your social media effort is on the road to success by returning
regularly to your pre-defined measurable goals and objectives.
If your unit does not have an overall communications plan with which you can align your
social media strategy, or if you need help conducting an assessment or developing your
social media strategy, contact and work with your unit’s media representative.
c. Provide your official UT Austin social media site URLs to the University Communications
Digital Content Group to be included in the university’s Know Social Media Directory. Doing so
encourages cross-site collaboration with all university-managed social media properties and
creates a one-stop directory for the university community and the university’s Web audiences
to connect with our social media platforms.
d. Social media sites at the university should be marked “official” in some way, where
appropriate (for example, in a Twitter bio or in the Facebook “about” section) and follow the
university’s What Starts Here Changes the World brand and visual guidelines.
e. Official UT Austin social media properties should provide contact names and email addresses,
or correct website URLs that point back to the university’s Web properties.
f. Where appropriate, guidelines should be posted on UT Austin social media sites that make
clear expectations of community members – as well as of its site managers. (Visit the About
section of The Ideas of Texas website for an example of guidelines that help Ideas of Texas site
contributors be responsible members of that Web community.)
g. All UT Austin social media sites should be monitored (and moderated, where appropriate) to
ensure the community is following the unit-developed site and comments guidelines.
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h. If a team of managers and content contributors is posting content on a University of Texas at
Austin social media site, each post should be “signed” by the person who posted it (for
example, “Posted by J. Smith, University Communications,” or “^JS” on Twitter).
i. It’s encouraged to link to UT Austin websites, online giving pages, etc., from universitymanaged social media sites. However, don’t link to password-protected UT Direct services from
third-party social media properties.
If you wish to direct someone to a UT Direct service, link to a university-owned Web page
that then directs visitors to the password-protected site. For example, “To access this
service, visit [department home page] and log in to UT Direct.”
j. All UT Austin social media sites are encouraged to use the approved, standard “Contribute
Now” button – available from the Office of Development – on social media platforms, where
it’s possible to do so. No other “Contribute Now” buttons should be used.
k. UT Austin -managed social media sites can’t host advertising. On third-party social media
platforms, if ads can be turned off on university pages, they should be.
On sites such as Facebook where ads can’t be eliminated without significant investment, the
units should make sure the benefit of being on Facebook outweighs the risks of advertising
being hosted on the page.
l. All University of Texas at Austin-managed social media sites should meet the university’s
Information Security Office standards.
We emphasize the importance of controlling the administration of organizational social
media accounts; that is, keeping the number of administrative publishers to a minimum and
having rules in place for managing login credentials. Don’t share your social media
passwords around the workplace or classroom.
m. All UT Austin -managed social media sites should meet the university’s Web Accessibility
Policy. University pages on third-party social media sites should make the best effort to follow
Web accessibility guidelines.
University-managed social media sites can be hosted by third parties as long as they meet
Web accessibility and Information Security Office guidelines.
n. Agencies working on behalf of UT Austin must also follow these guidelines, including
disclosing their business affiliation.
IV. Need Help?
a. If you have questions about this social media guidelines document, contact University
Communications at utopa@www.utexas.edu.
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b. If you discover inappropriate behavior on a UT Austin -managed social media property,
contact University Communications at utopa@www.utexas.edu.
c. If you want to exchange ideas with UT Austin colleagues who are engaging with social media,
subscribe to the Social Media Collaborative @UT mailing list, and let the discovery and
collaboration begin.
VI. About the Social Media Guidelines
a. Document Authors: This social media guidelines document was authored by a group of the
university’s Social Media Collaborative @UT, a consortium of staff, faculty and students
devoted to using social media technologies to further the mission of UT Austin.
b. Review Process: This document will be annually reviewed (and revised, if necessary) by the
Social Media Collaborative @UT.
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Sociology Department Social Media Guidelines
Protocols for Sociology Blogs, Twitter, and Facebook Accounts
1. Sociology Department Graduate Program Blog - UTAustinSOC
Blog administrators include:
 Sociology staff members Kevin Hsu, Julie Kniseley, and Evelyn Porter;
 A student blog editor who posts and reviews student authors’ posts.
Blog posts are edited prior to posting by the blog editor and an available staff member. This
helps to ensure quality and content consistency, while allowing a variety of graduate students
voices to be heard.
When writing a blog post, here are some things to remember:
 If you are planning to write a blog post about a faculty member’s talk, ask the faculty
member’s permission prior to the event. If you are planning to record the talk, ask the
faculty member’s permission prior to the event. It is very important that faculty
members understand whether their talk will be recorded or written about publicly prior
to speaking;
 Review the post for spelling and grammatical errors – this is a public forum with your
name attached;
 When using photos that are not our own, use images that are in the public domain and
credit the photographer to avoid copyright infringement;
 Blogging in an academic forum helps build your online reputation. Think about how your
writing reflects on your image as a scholar and how you represent the Sociology
department with the content and quality of your writing.
2. Sociology Department Graduate Program Facebook Page
To prevent cyber stalking, the department’s Facebook page is managed by Sociology staff
members who are the only authorized posters. Followers of the page can like and comment.
However, the page administrators monitor comments and review new followers to prevent
abuse.
3. Sociology Department Graduate Program Twitter Account - @UTAustinSOC
Just as a personal Twitter account builds connections and shares links and discussion trends,
the department Twitter account represents the department’s effort to build social networks
and contribute to a growing public body of Sociology. It is important to note distinctions
between the department’s Twitter account and your personal account and to avoid
representing one side of a controversial issue as an officially sanctioned point of view.

The departmental Twitter account is used to:
o Highlight faculty and student scholarly work;
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o Report from conferences and academic presentations;
o Promote university events and news.

Always identify yourself by your own handle when using @UTAustinSOC:
o At the beginning, e.g.: “tweeting from @UTAustinSOC is @personal handle”;
o At the ending, e.g.: “It’s been great tweeting for @UTAustinSOC, follow me
@personal handle. See you next time.”

Replying to a tweet helps to keep that conversation stream linked.
o The original tweet and every subsequent reply becomes part of the conversation,
collating all the tweets in the stream;
o Numbering your tweets as you reply also provides continuity.

Mention @UTAustinSOC when a personal tweet is relevant when:
o Tweeting a relevant sociological topic;
o You are using your personal account and tweeting to a network of scholars who
follow UTAustinSOC;
o Citing UTAustinSOC in a tweet;
o Retweeting a UTAustinSOC tweet automatically or with commentary upfront.

Use your own Twitter account when:
o You are part of a non-academic social media discussion;
o Your opinion is the main focus or content;
o You want to promote your own twitter feed;
o Discussing controversial topics that don’t represent the department or the university
as a whole.
Further resources:
Academic Twitter
Kris.Shafermusic.com
Deborah Upton – Introducing Digital Sociology
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