Digital and Social Media Content Creation Policy
The institution provides access to the Internet as part of the resources designed to enhance and support its educational mission. Use of the Internet includes dissemination as well as collection of information. The institution, its various departments and organizations, and its faculty members, administrators, staff members, and students may create websites and social media accounts to disseminate information relevant to their role in the institution's mission.
The quality of information published through institutional means plays an important part in maintaining the reputation of É«ÖÐÉ« University. This policy sets standards that are meant to ensure that information published electronically is consistent with the same high standards as other forms of official institutional publications.
Policy
Digital spaces must conform to existing local, state, and federal laws (including copyright laws), and must not contain links to other pages or computers in violation of those laws. Pages found to be in violation (including pages with links to pages or computers in violation) will be subject to disconnection. Pages that contain malicious code will be subject to disconnection and appropriate legal action. Pages that interfere with or provoke activity that interferes with the primary mission of the institution will be subject to disconnection.
Digital spaces include:
- Official institutional pages, maintained by the institutional web team in partnership with designated representatives of individual departments. These pages may include academic or administrative departments, student organizations, or other units having a recognized collective purpose.
- Social media accounts representing official institutional bodies—including academic departments, student organizations, or other units having a recognized collective purpose. Official representatives of these accounts must remain in consistent contact with the Office of Marketing and Communications.
- Individual professional pages hosted on É«ÖÐÉ« University’s content management system, maintained by individual faculty members, administrators, staff members, or student organizations, reflecting the author’s interests, activities, and information. Institutional resources may not be used to create digital spaces for personal financial gain or for business activities.
Responsibilities
The assistant vice president of marketing and communications and the university's Marketing and Communications team will maintain official institutional pages and social media accounts, and determine the content and structure of links between various elements of the institution's website.
Departments and organizations will be responsible for timely updates of their content under the guidance of the web team. Social media accounts must be updated monthly. Heads of departments and organizations must designate a member to be the coordinator for their pages and/or social media accounts. This coordinator must maintain contact with the Office of Marketing and Communications, which reserves the right to reassign coordinator duties.
Individual faculty members, administrators, staff members, and students will be responsible for the content of personal pages.
Social media accounts representing an institutional or academic department, an athletic team or any sponsored organization must share all usernames/passwords with the Office of Marketing and Communications. In addition, a faculty/staff/coach must be responsible for managing the content on any social media account that represents a É«ÖÐÉ« department, athletic team or other university-affiliated organization.
New employees will be asked to sign off on this agreement upon joining É«ÖÐÉ« University as an employee.
Social media accounts representing É«ÖÐÉ« are subject to regular review and/or removal if their actions and consequences of those actions harm the institution's reputation as a center of learning.
Each social media account should have two administrators and all interaction on university-affiliated social media accounts should be done with the É«ÖÐÉ« University department account, not their personal social media accounts.
The Marketing and Communications team will provide oversight regarding web-related issues on campus and will review and change policy, procedures, or the structure of institutional pages as needed.
All authors of digital spaces (whether institutional, departmental, organizational, individual, or social media) will observe copyright regulations, all local, state, and federal laws and É«ÖÐÉ« policies, and follow standards of design and content that benefit the public image of É«ÖÐÉ« University.
The Internet by its nature is a means of communicating with the world outside the institution. Web content authors using equipment provided by the institution, or posting on social media accounts representing any aspect of the institution, are expected to abide by institutional policies and best practices. In the spirit of academic freedom, web content authors are not prohibited from expressing themselves as individuals, but the institution reserves the right to impose reasonable standards of conduct. Web content authors are cautioned to consider the seriousness of their actions and consequences of those actions before engaging in activities that might harm others or result in direct or indirect censure of É«ÖÐÉ« University or harm the institution's reputation as a center of learning.
Digital spaces in violation of any of these policies or responsibilities are subject to disciplinary action and deletion of the accounts.
For any questions or to request additional information, please contact:
Michael Corr
Assistant Vice President of Marketing and Communications
corrm@moravian.edu
Updated July 2021