1. Eternal sunshine for spotless minds: Seven warnings for networking online
Katherine Watson, Coastline Community College, Fountain Valley, CA 92708
Bizarrissime@gmail.com
Born into an information-abundant world enhanced by access to multiple forms of media, more
than half of today’s college students take regular advantage of electronic access to “news”,
whether personal, public, or private, using audio, video, or text (Dean, 2012). Indeed, in an
epoch when the university has become not so much a marketplace of intellectual, professorial
or institutionally-generated ideas as it has become a sunny, “learner-driven bazaar” (Squires,
2007), the school that would remain not only “relevant” but societally integrated is expected to
retain both an “ordinary online presence” and a “socially mediated” one, with updated, efficiently
delivered news and data made available continuously via multiple media.
Thus, it has become clear not only that the lion’s share of the world’s college undergraduates
seeking degrees in the twenty-first century have grown up in a multimedia-mediated world. As
well, the new, learner-driven “marketplace” of education, these students typically demand the
flexibility, self-pacedness, and ease of access defining what they see as the most convenient,
online curriculum. Indeed, millions of new acolytes have been joining academe exclusively
online since the early 2000’s, particularly in Asia and Africa (Sawahel, 2013), where recently
improved fiber-optic connectivity and readily available “self-paced e-learning products” have
rendered learning not only possible in places where it never was in the past but practicable and
practical in ways unheard-of before 2005.
But many newly connected individuals, whether they be self-directed students or academic
officials, still fail to realize how important or enduring are the electronic communications that
support the online learning process. In particular, their increasing exploitation of such “social
media” as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, to name a few, has led to
misunderstanding and confusion in many cases, and to embarrassment and scandal in others.
Indeed, the Florida (Usa)-based Poynter Institute suggests that anyone who would post any
information online in any format or through any medium (e.g., audio, video, text) consider seven
reminders before tapping the “enter” key:
1. Assume that everything is public and perennial
2. Keep things professional, with a purpose
3. Give information rather than simple reactions
4. Avoid flooding the network
5. Keep things concise
6. Acknowledge sources/resources
7. Interact in a timely way
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2. These seven points should be considered before, during, and after information is posted,
advises Poynter. Each point comprises communicative impact, and each connects, both
figuratively and literally, to the next.
Assume that everything is public and perennial: What’s out there stays out there
Although popular, if not universal, wisdom holds that one can find out just about anything about
just about anything in the wide-open world of online information transmission, many users of
such electronic social networks as Twitter and Facebook retain “a level of comfort” with these
services and their so-called “privacy settings” that facilitates---in fact, encourages---a belief that
all communication that takes place in these realms is at once private, harmlessly entertaining,
secure, and immutable to changes that may be fabricated by others. As Fincham (2012) has
written for The Poynter Institute, however, users must beware: Social media postings are
frequently evaluated or criticized in ways not necessarily planned by their posters. Notably,
Weddle (2013) reports, “…over a third of HR professionals have visited social networking sites
to look for information about employment candidates. Personal info and videos posted on
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other sites are now considered fair game when employers
conduct ‘background checks’ on job seekers.” Weddle advises social networkers to “represent
themselves well”, attending to the public image being conveyed. Even the seemingly short,
insignificant posting comprises a tool for outsider evaluation. And Fincham (2012) counsels
twenty-first century educational institutions to remind students as well as staff that, while
“(Some people) think it doesn’t matter what they say, we need to change that mindset…Twitter
(and Facebook) are a permanent public record (and) will be around a long, long time.”
Fincham (2012) cites new-media journalism professors as having become particularly
assiduous in promoting public-minded “future-thinking”; journalistic social networkers in
particular are invited to imagine a world ten years from now: “Will this get me in trouble?” they
must ask themselves. And if there is any question, then they should keep their thoughts to
themselves. Indeed, the wait-awhile test might well be applied to all social media postings, even
though posters may think that they absolutely must comment instantly on things; often, even a
short wait can be educational, enlightening, perspective-giving.
Waiting a moment before clicking “enter” can also help to warn social media users of a too-
infrequently considered distinction about keeping not-to-be-made-public thoughts to themselves
in a twenty-first century world where boundaries of time and space scarcely exist. That is, users
must remain alert that the divergence separating public from private is not the same one that
distinguishes anonymous v. recognized. Appreciation of the former differentiation permits
people to yammer loudly on cellphones in public even while retaining “private” conversational
intimacy. Attention to the latter, for its part, calls for awareness of one’s audience; the user of
social media must remain conscious that receivers of his message may not share his sense of
humor, his point of view, his notion of what is significant or insignificant, casual or calculated.
Keep things professional, with a purpose: Remember why
It is seductive to retain the notion that electronic social media are indeed just casual, harmless,
and social. Fincham (2012) reports that even in many schools of journalism in the United States,
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3. students still “only see (the network) as a private messaging service to use with close friends”.
But in an era when, as Weddle (2013) notes, employers have come to exploit electronic social
media as extra, enlightening, modern-era tools for ordinating innumerable applicants, students
should keep in mind that, as Fincham (2012) reports from the world of professional journalism,
Twitter and Facebook accounts “…will generally be seen as reflective …”. Thus, we are
counseled to bear in mind not only that everything is public online but also that subtle, often
unstated societal differences still exist not only between the aforementioned public and private,
anonymous and recognized but between the formal v. informal and the professional v.
unprofessional. Indeed, Fincham (2012) continues, social networkers must recognize that such
services as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram can cast new light upon themselves;
users must remain on top of their multimedia (inter)activity so as to “add value” and not detract
from the image they wish to retain or broadcast professionally. As Thornton (2012) states, “It is
so not about what you had for lunch or what color your nails are…” Users of social networks
must remember that the networks themselves use no culling tools; the banal and the vital may
lie side-by-side, with neither accorded more or less social media ‘weight’”. Like a new tattoo, the
image that one exhibits online has no background/foreground, nor any really effective way of
de-imaging an image.
Fincham (2012) points out that as more and more professionals take advantage of electronic
media, it is becoming increasingly important for users to attend to something beyond the simple
image or to the collage of images comprising Facebook or Twitter histories; ethics must be
considered, too. Each post must be evaluated before it is dispatched, not only for its adherence
to principles of humane behavior but for its effect upon outsiders’ trust. As the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy has noted, “social networking ethics” in the twenty-first century
concern “…virtually every type of significant social bond or role: friend-to-friend, parent-to-child,
co-worker-to co-worker, employer-to-employee, teacher-to-student, neighbor-to-neighbor, seller-
to-buyer, and doctor-to-patient, to offer just a partial list” (2013). Just as journalism professionals
advise young writers to imagine a world ten years on as a test of whether or not a particular
posting is a good idea in a socially mediated world, so should anyone who would tap “enter”
consider the posting from the viewer’s or reader’s perspective. The “visitor from another planet”
test might well be applied in the case of social media ethics: Imagine yourself as such a visitor
reading/viewing your Facebook postings, your Twitter tweets, or the like, and then decide if you
should really click “enter”…or not.
And finally, it must be recalled that retaining a professional tone is important in all
communication, whether in formal writing, in speaking, or online. As Weddle (2013) suggests,
those social networkers who would respond to others’ postings should “follow the lead” of the
original poster before making their own remarks, as long as the “lead” in question merits
following. In short, as has been advocated earlier, social media users would do well to wait and
weigh possible consequences before posting their remarks too quickly or reactively.
Give information, rather than simple reactions: Remember when & what
The speed and the lively nature of multimedia communication can easily trigger rapid, often
unthinking, responses that may be categorized as automatic, trigger-happy reactions more than
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4. as well-considered, communication-rich replies. Too, just as social media messaging tone is
most effective and least offensive when it remains professional, so must the message-maker
remind himself that the tone of a reaction tends more often than not to be self-interested,
subjective, rather than constructively objective. That is, for instance, the outsider---or, indeed,
the aforementioned visitor from another planet-- who would read the reactive post will find out
more about the person doing the posting than he will discover about the matter that is
supposedly under discussion. The social networker who would take professional, useful
advantage of the systems would do well to retain as objective an air as possible in his postings,
using concrete, specific terms, unbiased language, and genuine information, data, or facts.
Opinions, if they are posted, should be marked as such. And naturally, as the Oxford University
Press Social Networking Guidelines state, networkers should “stick to what (they) know when
writing”, avoiding posts that may misrepresent or give an inaccurate image, especially in the
literal sense.
Twitter and Facebook provide easy systems for sharing images or links, videos or audio. And
as Newell (2013) states, “We can post everything that comes down the pike, and so we do.”
But, Newell continues, “The trick is to post the relevant, but not the annoying.” But, as Fincham
(2012) adds, remarks, photos, and URLs are really useful “only when they add value to an
online identity”, rather than serving as wordless, simplistic reactions or elliptical rejoinders. And
as the Huffington Post has pointed out, Twitter and Instagram seem even to invite hashtags,
those “#” symbols preceding what someone has decided are single-word labels for “trending
topics”; the hashtag user’s goal is to lead others into a (usually-Twitter-based) search of
commentary on the topic in question. But with no accepted rules on how to use them, hashtags
can be attached to things that posters may wish to call their own but that may not exactly be
their own, just to attract more comments to their postings and grow their groups of “followers.”
Kelly (2012) is one of numerous multiple-media mavens to warn, however, that using three or
more such tags in a 140-character post tends to be frustrating, distracting, and frequently
counter-productive, referring the reader more often away from the original posting that into it.
“Clues” must be given within the tweet or social media posting, suggests Fincham (2012), so
that readers will be able to know the gist of the post without having to click or scroll. Too,
Fincham (2012) adds, each social medium must be recognized “as part of a bigger picture”; the
media altogether can have “a volumizing effect”, she notes, wherein the very quantity of data
can influence, or even determine, evaluation of its information-bearing quality.
Indeed, no matter the quantity, the effective, high-quality information transmission must always
be accurate and clear, as Gates (2011) summarizes, if it is to retain value. “Detailed,
appropriate data” and “clear focus” must remain the bywords of communication, so that social
messaging does not become “just talk” or network noise. Often, re-reading one’s prospective
posting can be revealing; before tapping the “enter” key, one would do well to proofread, even
set aside a draft of the post before putting it online for everyone on the network to see.
Avoid “flooding” the network: Enough is enough
Network flooding can come in more than one way, but it is always a frustration to fellow Internet
users. That is, as has been noted, neither Facebook nor Twitter is awfully excellent at
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5. separating the wheat from the chaff, the significant postings from the trivial. Too, excessive
remarks on a subject can give that subject a seeming significance that it does not have in
reality, while a more important matter has been washed over. In fact, as Fincham (2012) warns,
too many postings on a particular subject by a particular individual can “make their regular
followers feel spammed.” Newell (2013) warns: “None of us want one (other) person
monopolizing the Twitter feeds”, adding: “If anyone posts too many times…bam! They’ll be
dropped…effectively silenc(ed) forever.”
Indeed, as Newell (2013) suggests, users of the vastly and continuously expanding social
network would do well to “find the sweet spot between abandonment and inundation”,
commenting pertinently, neither ad nauseam nor ad infinitum upon postings made by others
and labeling their own postings meaningfully, rather than with cutesy, or in-group, or otherwise
obtuse tags. Fincham (2012) suggests that users of Twitter, in particular, sometimes seem to
imagine that this social network comprises a combination of a storytelling tool and a global
information network ripe for everyone’s interactive commentary. She suggests that users who
plan to be tweeting a lot during a particular period of time would do well to “give followers a
heads-up with an introductory tweet, (making them) ready for a lot of tweets from you in a short
period.” In such a manner, Fincham (2012) suggests, users’ “friends” or “followers” can choose
for themselves whether or not to attend to a temporary flood.
Keep things concise: When in doubt, leave it out
Along with avoiding a network flood, Weddle (2013) notes as well that baffling with bull is never
as successful as is wowing with wisdom, even in social media: “Multi-syllable words and
complex thoughts don’t influence as much as clearly expressed ….simple, accurate
(presentations).” Concision also means clarity, with words and phrases selected carefully so as
not to be misunderstood by anyone not in the message-sender’s cognoscenti; ambiguity will
usually annoy. As Oxford University Press Social Media Guidelines (2013) point out, the use of
industry jargon or of social media/tech lingo is not beneficial to understanding, but neither is it
smart to attempt to write/comment about areas beyond one’s expertise. Happily, Twitter’s 140-
character limit does help posters to keep things concise, but the service’s “extremely high
signal-to-noise ratio”, as the Oxford University Press (OUP) calls it, tends to make posters feel
they must cry out or repeat themselves, so as to attract interest. OUP suggests no more than
three to five tweets per day, so that the system will retain its utility as an effective broadcasting,
sharing, or advertising tool. And Fincham (2012) adds that the Twitter design of 140-characters-
or-fewer offers users an excellent opportunity to train themselves in how to write short and well.
Tenore (2012) calls Twitter “a powerful tool for writers…an electronic editor that forces us to find
a focus and make every word count—a constant reminder that it’s often harder to write short
than it is to write long.” Tweets can show that short writing can demonstrate depth, significant
weight, and strong writing in a short space, Tenore (2012) observes, giving pithy immediacy as
well as insightful outlooks on the work of others.
Acknowledge sources and resources: Give credit where/when it is due
Social networkers can be so eager to get their own words out, their own insights into the
network, that they neglect to acknowledge what triggered these words. Happily for users of
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6. Twitter, the re-tweet exists, automatically making reference to a previous remark, and Facebook
posts discussion threads. But many users seem to feel, as Fincham (2012) notes, that they can
show their creativity or novel modes of thought by pretending to be the first to post something,
when in fact they are neither the first nor the very interesting. As Oxford University Press Social
Media Guidelines (2013) suggest, “active engagement” with social media will make a good
impression only when rules of “Netiquette”, social etiquette online, are attended to; users must
acknowledge sources and give credit where it is due.
In “How Not to Steal People’s Content on the Web”, Endon (2012) observes, most social media
users are eager to see that their material has been commented upon, re-tweeted, or otherwise
noticed by others. The problem arises, however, when users fail to notice whether or not
“copying is okay”; Endon warns that those who fail to notice such things may---and should—“…
receive threatening E-mails or letters and even demand that you pay them for using (their
content.” Endon offers advice on how to cite content in blog posts, on Twitter, and on Facebook,
LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest, with examples and citations of his own. Notably, he includes
through his blog posting on this matter certain pertinent questions, such as “Are you taking
steps to ensure you give credit where credit’s due with shared content on the internet?” and
“Like what you’ve read? Click here to subscribe…”. As Oxford University Press Social Media
Guidelines (2013) assert and reassert, copyrighted material must never be posted as one’s
own, and even in blogs and YouTube postings, copyrights can often be found. Indeed, and
once again, as has been suggested in other areas of this present discussion of the uses and
utility of various social media, putting oneself in the position of the audience will prove valuable
here; asking oneself how it might feel to see one’s carefully chosen words, one’s well-conceived
notion or layout, picture or commentary, set forth on another person’s homepage as if it
originated with that person can prove more than frustrating.
Interact in a timely way: Do it now
In an era of speed and concision, not to mention dissolution of ordinary time zones, it is not only
inventions and innovations, but the effective exploitation of those novelties, that is expected. As
Klein (2010) has suggested, most of what has generated the touted boom of “social networking”
has been “1% inspiration and 99% timeliness.” In like manner, those who exploit such
networking have grown up in an epoch of instantaneity, where waiting is not an option; updates
to Facebook and Twitter, message threads, tags, and links happen each within less than a
minute of the last, with no attention to time zone. As Gates (2011) suggests, “week-old, even
day-old information, no matter how quickly distributed, is still old information.” And as Newell
(2013) reminds, although quality, timeliness, and volume may be the evaluable measures of
blogging or other electronic communications, it is timeliness alone that remains the nec plus
ultra of the social network. No one likes to have to wait, time seems limitless online, and, as
Tenore (2012) observes, one of the particular advantages of Twitter in its recent common use
as a tool for delivering world news is its ability to transmit quick, present-tense, especially timely
immediacy. Too, access to Twitter and other social media via portable communication devices
can take advantage both of the “always-on” nature of electronic updating mechanisms and of
the ease of transmitting graphics, video, audio, and text simultaneously. “Own the media now;
the minute you stop telling your story, the media tells it for you”, advise Chang et al. (2012).
6

7. Of course, the need for timeliness should be weighed against the aforementioned warning not to
enter electronic information into the network in a simple signal-response, reactive way. It is not
in military operations alone that “the first report is always wrong,” as Bratt, et al. (2010) state,
adding that the second report is often frequently wrong, too. Thus, just as the social media user
is advised to find the sweet spot between abandonment and inundation with respect to quality
and quantity of his postings, so should he seek the temporal sweet spot lying between too-quick
and too-slow.
Conclusions and consequences
The Poynter Institute’s Kelly Fincham (2012) warns that one of most problematic features of
social networking, apart from its ease of use and convenience, is its tendency to be considered,
particularly among young people, as fleeting, not serious, not really “significant” or “legitimate.”
Alternatively, universities have accepted, almost begrudgingly, that they “have no choice but to
integrate these platforms into their marketing and communications plans” (Klamm, 2011).
Indeed, Klamm (2011) points out, “a recent study showed that an astounding 100% of
universities have a social media presence.” And so it appears, although “the 18-to-24-year old
college student demographic”, as Klamm calls it, would use social media regularly for quick,
not-always-significant minor acquaintance-connecting, the older, college-educated
administrative demographic has come to take these media with major seriousness.
Unfortunately, institutional staff seems more often than not to have failed to understand what to
do and how to do it online, as Pidaparthy (2011) reports. Pidaparthy describes institutional
Websites with outdated faculty and staff lists, curricula that are not offered, and images not
representative of the schools in question. Thus, it seems, although institutions may “have an
online presence”, that presence is not always as effective or as interactive as it might be.
Tilsley (2012) notes survey results indicating that more than three quarters of current and
prospective students “check their Facebook at least once a day”, and more than two thirds of
those surveyed “use social media to research colleges”, but these are probably not sufficient
reasons for institutions simply to “have a social media presence” alongside an online one.
Rather, Tilsley notes, it is what the entire institutional staff does with social media that really
counts, not just to prospective students but to currently enrolled ones and to the staff that would
interact with them. Indeed, as Pidaparthy (2011) reports, “…a robust social media campaign,
along with such creative features as student-run blogs, can lure…while a stale online presence
can turn off.” In fact, Pidaparthy adds, the organization Student Advisor.com has created a
ranking of the “Top 100 Social Media Colleges” to classify institutions “on how well they use
social media.” But even though the Pidaparthy and Tilsley pieces quote students as saying that
they “like” or even prefer to get information about colleges through social media, stating that
such information is easier to access, faster to peruse, and even “more reliable” than might be
the traditional slick marketing tools of the past, these same institutions are, for the most part,
using the social media only for advertising themselves (Osborne, 2012).
With all the interest in new media and institutions’ most effective exploitation of them, it might be
asked if the communication/media tail is wagging the communicated/information dog. Using an
alternative metaphor, Pidaparthy points out that once an institution does decide to join
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8. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, or another social medium, that institution is opening a
very active can of worms whose worms must be tended to regularly. “Students will make a
judgment about a university if it is not current and responsive online. When their post doesn’t
get answered, they aren’t interested anymore.” Socially mediated attention spans are
notoriously ephemeral. It therefore appears that, in the twenty-first century as in epochs past,
we recognize often without realizing it that structural changes are taking place in our affairs that
have been provoked by new modes of message transmission. McLuhan’s 1964 observations
that new media can play with the conceptions of speed and time so that a world of sequence
and connections can be transformed into a universe of creative configuration and structure are
indeed being re-echoed more than five decades on. .
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employers
APPENDIX
Social media best practices, summarized from Oxford University Press
Here are a few things to bear in mind as you develop your presence on the social web.
DOs DON'Ts
• Showcase thought/ideas leadership.
• Post frequent updates: A good rule of
thumb is weekly+ for
blogs/YouTube/Facebook, and daily+
for Twitter.
• Be friendly and casual: Social posts will
appear among posts from users' friends
and family.
• Be human: Have a (consistent & clear)
perspective and voice.
• Be concise: Get to the point before
losing readers' interest.
• Be timely: Respond to comments and
queries as soon as possible, but in a
well-considered way; avoid simply
“reacting”.
• Use social etiquette: acknowledge
sources and give credit where it's due
via. attributions, retweets, and so on;
follow others and they may follow you!
• Stick to what you know: when writing a
blog article, stick to your areas of
expertise.
• Use overly familiar or potentially offensive language.
• Use industry or social media/tech jargon.
• Sound like a different person on different
channels/media.
• Be overly promotional of yourself or your work.
• Post too frequently; this can be seen as 'spamming'
or ‘flooding’.
• Write about topics outside your area of expertise.
• Misrepresent yourself or your qualifications.
• Post copyrighted material without proper clearance
and attribution.
• Underestimate the resources—in terms of content
and time—required to launch and maintain a social
presence over the long term. Don’t forget: (a) to
update; (b) to realize that first reports are generally
wrong/inaccurate/incomplete
10