Social Media in Government

How to Handle a Mishap

Government Information Services Department of Internal Affairs July 2012 Version 1.0

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Contents
1. Purpose and scope 2. Types of mishaps 3. Before the event 4. During the event 5. After the event 2 3 5 5 10

Licensing
Crown copyright . This copyright work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand licence. In essence, you are free to copy, distribute and adapt the work, as long as you attribute the work to Department of Internal Affairs and abide by the other licence terms. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nz/.

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1. Purpose and scope

This guide is designed to help Government agencies when responding to a social media mishap. The aim is to provide guidance when social media goes horribly wrong such as when a message is misinterpreted or when there is backlash from a social media community. Such mishaps can cause damage to your online reputation and need to be managed carefully. Because of the speed of the social media space as compared to traditional media, youll need new approaches, judgements and responses to work through such issues. This document starts with the Business as Usual (BAU) activities you should undertake to provide a certain amount of prevention, as well as an early warning system, of an impending issue. It then details guidelines for dealing with an event before moving into post-event analysis, which is your opportunity to review and amend processes and procedures as necessary. Finally, the guide gives some tips on what should be done after the event in order to move forward.

Companion documents
This guide should be read alongside the previously published Social Media in Government documents published by the Department of Internal Affairs including the High Level Guidance and the Hands-on Toolbox.1 The High-level Guidance document takes you through issues that need to be considered before your agency begins using social media. It offers information to help with benefit and risk assessment and, finally, a business case template designed to stimulate thinking around key areas that need to be considered when planning to use social media. The Hands-on Toolbox document has been written to help practitioners who are setting up social media profiles and using the tools on a daily basis. It has been written for public servants with limited experience using social media, but also offers tools and tips that will be useful for those practitioners who have been using social media for some time. Together, these Social Media in Government documents will help those willing to engage with target audiences through social media, and to take positive action that will benefit their agency.

2. Types of mishaps
There is a range of potential social media challenges that Government agencies may face. Directed abuse Abuse directed at the agency or an individual at the agency. Leak/Early Release The release of information prior to its official release.

http://webstandards.govt.nz/guides/strategy-and-operations/social-media/high-level-guidance/

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Unwanted Intrusion The participation of an agency in a social media conversation is unwanted by the audience. Heated Topic Discussion of a topic which gains strong viewpoints from opposing sides. Misinterpreted Message A message intended one way, but interpreted another. Misaligned Expectations - The expectation of the audience is different to the expectations of the agency. Hack or Wrong Account Posting An accounts security is compromised and inappropriate messages are posted or a user accidentally posts on the agency account rather than their own. Questionable Humour Humour that may not be received as funny to the entire audience. Insensitive Statement/Opinion A statement or opinion which may be received as insensitive or offensive. the ease of resolving the issue the impact it has on brand and reputation.

The following diagram illustrates the way social media mishaps range in terms of:

The four outlying issues of Hack or Wrong Account Posting (low impact/easy to remedy), Directed Abuse (low impact/hard to remedy), Insensitive Statement or Opinion (high impact/easy to remedy), and Leak or Early Release (high impact/hard to remedy) have specific responses required when facing them. The centre cluster of Unwanted Intrusion, Heated Topic, Misinterpreted Message, and Misaligned Expectations are issues with moderate impact that are moderately easy or hard to remedy. They are often the challenging area for Government agencies because there are no specific rules and processes to follow for each situation. People responding to social media on behalf of the agency need to rely on a set of general behavioural guidelines and judgements made at the time. The diagram also identifies the
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Questionable Humour issue as low on the ease of remedy scale, but having a moderate impact on reputation. The general guidelines listed below will assist with the centre cluster of issues. The outlying issues are still assisted by the general guidelines; however they have some more specific assistance detailed in the document. The purpose of this diagram is to show the range of issues that might occur and provide perspective when dealing with a challenging situation.

3. Before the event

Putting basic BAU processes in place is your most effective way of avoiding social media mishaps. As the social media guidelines state, the best way to ensure you are aware of what people are saying and when is to spend time monitoring and listening. A constant monitoring programme across as many platforms as possible is the best early warning system.

Be ready for a mishap

Identify key people to be notified in the event of an issue. This list should be reviewed and kept current in line with other communications escalation procedures. Identify and approve social media authors to respond in the event of a social media mishap. Note that a mishap may occur outside of business hours so there should be approved authors from operational areas that cover these hours if possible. Develop several first response templates for each social media platform. These will assist the authors in responding to a social media mishap quickly and should go through a formal communications sign-off. Establish a formal process for releasing the first response to a social media mishap.

Minimising the chance of a mishap

Identify key influencers within your social media base and keep them happy who has the most followers and what does the influencer appear to find most valuable within the social media realm? Keep your content creative and engaging to ensure you provide value to your audience. The more captured your audience is, the more likely they will resolve potential issues for you. Ensure you have goals and objectives in place to measure your social media presence. Inhouse monitoring may or may not be combined with current media monitoring activity. It requires online tools to monitor platforms and more details about these can be found in the Hands-on Toolkit. Keep in mind that social media includes agency posts on other sites as well as the traditional mediums of Twitter and Facebook, etc.

4. During the event

Your first response strategy needs to be thought out in advance of a mishap occurring. Each agency will need to consider its own appropriate level of response. At a minimum you should: Notify the key people throughout the agency immediately and ensure you keep them up to date. Nominate social media authors to monitor and respond during the event. Depending on the severity of the event these may need to respond outside business hours and, in extreme cases, around the clock.

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Prepare the first response using the approved template response for the appropriate platform i.e. Twitter- release a tweet. Always try to respond on the platform where the mishap occurred. Cover your awareness of the issue, that you are looking into it and will let people know more once you have further information. Thank everyone for their patience and understanding. Publish the initial response as soon as possible by following the documented, pre-approved process in place, including escalations following the first response. If you find yourself in the middle of a social media mishap and you have no previously established process in place, ensure your manager is advised immediately.

General Guidelines
The State Services Code of Conduct2 sets expectations of public servants that extends to their behaviour online. For specific rules or remedies for most social media mishaps, general guidance is needed for staff. As each social media platform and audience is unique, it takes time to develop the knowledge of how to work through a situation. Consider your reputation and that of the NZ Government in responding to social media mishaps. Consistent management and engagement will ensure the best understanding of how your specific community may react under given circumstances. Here are general guidelines for online behaviour.

Do
Ensure necessary senior management are advised in accordance with your agencys communications policy. Be honest (within legal guidelines) and genuinely apologise for mistakes. Act super-fast, even if you only say you are investigating immediately. If you cannot respond quickly, listen and be attentive to positive and negative comments. Show that real people in your agency are trying to fix the problem. Stay in touch and update people individually or in general where there are many similar queries to respond to. Establish a hashtag3 for a large incident so people can follow it, or use one that is in common circulation. If a primary authoritative source does issue information, attribute it to them clearly. Keep it simple; get to the heart of the issue. Recognise and thank members of the community that support you. While humour can assist a situation, it may not be appropriate coming from Government agencies where an authoritative response is expected. Encourage people to send feedback and respond promptly to that feedback. If they have a complaint, ask them to contact you directly. Correct faulty information tactfully in a calm and congenial manner. Keep your messaging simple and your tone non-threatening; try not to be reactive. Be specific and relay what went wrong and the remedial steps you are taking. Keep your community up to date on progress.

2 3

Code of Conduct for the State Services at: http://www.ssc.govt.nz/code Hashtag - a tag embedded in a message posted on Twitter, consisting of a word within the message prefixed with a hash (#) sign. e.g. This is a twitter message with a #hashtag.

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If threat of litigation prevents your agency from admitting a mistake or issuing an apology, reassure audiences that the agency is taking steps to ensure what transpired never happens again.

Dont
Dont ignore complaints. Dont prioritise speed over accuracy of information. Dont spread something without verifying the source. Dont spread hate against persons or a community. Dont spread information that could be used negatively. Dont say something or try to be funny for the sake of it. Every statement should have a purpose in a mishap. Dont respond to, or delete abuse or trolling4. Stay calm and ask them to contact you directly. Dont engage in lengthy dialogue, social media is not the right forum and allows for too much interpretation. Dont use technical jargon. Dont quote rules or regulations unless you need to correct facts. Dont drip-feed solutions or information, dont prolong if you dont have to. Dont say no comment. If you have no information to hand, be honest and explain you will go and enquire.

Hack or Wrong Account Posting

If the account is hacked, contact the social networking platform owner as quickly as possible if you are locked out of the account. Use other forms of communication to explain the situation. Act quickly and show the remedy to the situation. In the case of hacking, ensure that processes for login and authentication are reviewed and amended after the event. In some cases humour might be appropriate, but dont try to be funny. Just be human. You should never mix personal and corporate social media accounts on one system such as Tweetdeck. While convenient for social media responders, it can result in easy mistakes.

Social media in action:

Sen. Charles Grassley (Jan 2012)
Senator Charles Grassley is one of the most-followed members of the US Congress on Twitter, and in January 2012 his account was hacked by someone for the use of political activism. The hacker urged people to vote against certain bills that Grassley had previously supported. Grassleys staff notified Twitter immediately after the first posting. The account password was changed and handed back to the control of the Senator.

Directed Abuse
Directed abuse can put considerable strain on the people monitoring and engaging with target audiences through social media. The attacks can be brutal and sometimes quite personal. You do not have to take abuse or harassment. Often it will be in breach of the terms of service for the platform and you can approach the service provider directly to investigate for you.

Trolling Purposeful attempt to aggravate, blame or direct abuse to get a response from you in order to inflame a situation further.

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Often the online community will recognise the difference between a complaint and abuse and will assist you in dealing with it. They will usually support you and understand that you are trying to work through the issue. Important considerations for resolving abuse are: Tone What tone has the person used towards you or the agency? Does it appear the discussion could be rational or are they negative and aggressive? Frequency Is this abuse part of a larger trend or is it a one off incident? Influence All complaints should be acknowledged, however note must be taken of how many followers, friends or subscribers a person has in order to consider an appropriate response Viral Behaviour As with frequency and influence, is this a one off incident or is this person gathering a following? Look at number of retweets, comments, etc. Make use of your social media monitoring tools. Most people who complain don't even know you're on Twitter or reading their blog. When they do, write to them and tell them who you are and ask if you can help. You'll probably be able to tell immediately if you can make things better. It doesn't hurt to try. Many people are just really happy to hear from someone. Find out the root of the problem and if you can't fix it personally, or right away, tell them you're working on it. Keep in constant communication until its been resolved. Stay positive and respectful.

Social media in action:

British MP (Jul 2011)
A conservative MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire in Britain suffered highly abusive comments on Twitter following the Commons media committee report into the highly published phone hacking scandal. The MP has blamed users for immoral postings and does not lay any blame with Twitter. The Police can use legislation to lay charges, and Twitter can intervene with identified users.

Telecom (Jan 2010)

During the series of outages that hit Telecom's new XT mobile network, an anonymous Twitter user sent a series of abusive and offensive tweets of a personal nature to members of the Telecom Twitter team. The staff remained calm and didn't respond to the harassment despite the upsetting nature of the comments. Telecom alerted Twitter as it breached usage guidelines and the account was soon shut down. Meanwhile, despite the outage, Telecom's online community rallied around and sent messages of support to the team.

Leak or Early Release

Data leakage introduces a serious risk for agencies. When employees post on their social networking sites about projects they are working on or policies their agencies are developing, they dont necessarily realise they are posting government confidential information. If information is perceived to be leaked it will spread quickly and will usually result in a flood of activity and questions directed to the agency. Any staff answering social media must be completely aligned with other spokespeople for the agency and updates must be given to both traditional and new media at the same time. This spike in activity may require additional staff to help answer queries. It may also require strong links throughout the agency to people who can give authoritative or technical answers.

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Dont disseminate any information that would violate any form of New Zealand legislation or would be contradictory to your agencys Code of Conduct. Other types of information may also require legal or public relations counsel before publishing, for example: information that invades the right to privacy (personnel records, medical files or information provided to the agency in confidence) identities of injured or dead until you receive assurance that the next of kin have been notified medical condition of injured parties; queries should be referred to hospital authorities statements attributing blame or speculation about the cause of the mishap, unless based on findings of official investigative agencies information about dollar estimates or financial ramifications until appropriate agency officials have conducted an appraisal.

Social media in action:

BBC (Jul 2011)
After several celebrities, including Sophie EllisBextor, released tweets about upcoming series and guest appearances, BBC have had to consider a contractual ban on such social media activity. The leaks pre-empted marketing campaigns and announcements, effectively costing millions of pounds.

British Military (Jan 2010)

Ministry of Defence employees exposed upcoming secrets via Facebook and Twitter. At least 16 separate incidents were recorded. The British Military were forced to cancel numerous secret operations, severely impacting the Military's effectiveness. Ten employees faced disciplinary action due to the leaks and new procedures were put in place to combat future incidences.

More information on legal considerations can be found in Social Media in Government: Hands-on Toolbox document.

Insensitive Opinion or Statement

This issue often happens after you have been engaged on social media for a period of time and employees feel comfortable interacting with the community. Unfortunately this relaxation can cause a slip of the tongue or a flippant remark in jest. Due to the speed of the Internet, this issue can become a much bigger challenge to manage if not dealt with quickly. Be aware that the issue may persist since it can be easily shared and quoted on the Internet for a length of time.

Social media in action:

Kenneth Cole (Jan 2011)
In 2011, Kenneth Cole made an insensitive tweet regarding the protests in Egypt, in an attempt to promote his spring collection: Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC Users around the world reacted immediately, calling for a boycott of the company and posting satirical fake tweets. Cole posted an apology on Facebook. However, his worldwide credibility was already damaged from the incident.

Act quickly. I apologise to everyone who was offended by my Apologise genuinely. insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. Ive Show the steps you will take to ensure it will dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious not happen again. social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against Make your resolution public. oppression was poorly timed and absolutely See it from the users point of view. inappropriate. 5 Do not retaliate to abuse or trolling . It is a judgement call if you choose to delete a post, however never delete comments just because they are negative. Delete comments only if the language is offensive or abusive. State that such form of discussion is against your moderation policy.
Trolling Purposeful attempt to aggravate, blame or direct abuse to get a response from you in order to inflame a situation further.

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5. After the event

Once a mishap is under control it is an opportune time within the agency to assess the situation, the response and the outcome. This information should be used to document the lessons learned. You may need to change processes, roles and responsibilities going forward and these outcomes should be fed back into your BAU activities when you have completed the audit. After a social media mishap you will need to re-engage with the community and rebuild your presence and persona. This should be done genuinely by listening and engaging slowly. Do not assume you can jump straight back to the comfortable pattern of interaction you may have had previously. You will need to demonstrate responsibility, reform and then reaffirm, and prove your intents or aspirations.

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