Social Media Self-Awareness

Taylor Zanville
tz967314@ohio.edu

Despite the fact that Twitter is public, there are settings featured on the social media phenomenon that allow users to privatize their profiles. There is no reason that someone should not be able to protect their tweets from the outside world, aside from the followers that they allow to see their profile in its entirety, which is ironic considering the fact that the privacy setting to protect your tweets is titled, "Protect My Tweets." As most of us know, if a profile is listed as private, or protected, it can not be retweeted or forwarded, even by permitted followers of the account, unless the follower was to go as far as to screenshot the entire page and repost it.

Social media outlets, Twitter in particular, have become major information, news, and entertainment outlets. Business are going as far as to place advertisements, links, photos, videos, and information about their organizations all over Twitter, despite the current issues regarding the money Twitter is making, or lack their of. There are many means of distributing company news, so why would Twitter be the right place to do that, especially with all of the issues we see about public tweeting?

I'm sure Christine Fox had great intentions, she claims she did, while interviewing the victims of sexual assault, but that was prior to her awkward and inappropriate comment which was clearly taken in many wrong ways-, "I wonder what she was wearing to entice him." Her story is interesting and is entirely centered around her tweeting and getting permission to take tweets and quotes and forwarding them to other locations, which then hers were taken and reposted elsewhere and so on and so forth. I have provided the link to the article here-  Christine Fox Article.

http://creatememe.chucklesnetwork.com/memes/76041/yo-dawg-i-heard-you-liked-twitter-so-i-retweeted-your-tweet-abou/

According to an article on cnn.com , the release of Whitney Houston's death was announced on Twitter from a secondary account at least half of an hour before the Associated Press did. The tweet came from the niece of Houston's hairstylist, who was aware of Whitney's situation at the time of its occurrence. So how do we determine when it is or is not appropriate to use Twitter as our main source of information? Imagine how Whitney Houston's family felt to have found out that their beloved Whitney was dead via Twitter.

For reasons that would follow the Whitney Houston scenario, Coca-Cola has guidelines and principles behind their online presence, especially because they have such an incredibly high amount of online traffic, whether that be conversations over social media postings or Coca-Cola themselves communicating with associates. According to our reading, Coca-Cola Social Media Guidelines, Coke wants to, "Be transparent, protect privacy, respect copyrights, be responsible with technology, and monitor social media." Those involved in social media campaigns are held to a specific standard for this company and that includes any and all tweets that they put out or repost.

The key point to take away from this is- look at what happens with irresponsible tweets. Fortune 1000 companies establish entire departments and policies for these things now because technology and social media are such a rising aspect of news and information distribution. Whitney Houston's family found out she was dead via Twitter; can you imagine how that would feel? I certainly can not. It may not be the only solution, but privatizing and monitoring your tweets can make a world of a difference.