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Anyone have major Twitter complaints lately? I’m at the end of my rope and want my uni to delete its account
Have any of you seen a dramatic increase of social media complaints about racism?
My school has been completely inundated with random (mostly out-of-town) complaints about students or prospective students posting racist content on social media this week.
It’s been terrible! Some of the reports are blatantly awful posts, but most have been mild and has been twisted to be “worse(?)” than it really is. I feel like Twitter users are trying to get their enemies in trouble and it’s not always out of genuine concern about racism.
Anyone else dealing with this? I manage social media at my mid-size midwestern university (Illinois). We went from no complaints of this nature in over a year, to at least 50 this week, plus a few complaints about faculty/staff.
We’re a public school so we don’t want to deny admission/expel in most of these cases unless they’re threatening. Our stance has been that prospective/traditional students are not fully intellectually developed and can learn to do and be better from the higher ed environment. Our mission is education, so we would not be fulfilling that mission by turning them away.
I feel like I have whiplash from this week. I am really feeling mentally and emotionally impacted from reading all of this Twitter vitriol. I’m just frustrated by what I feel like is internet bullying and I’m sad from reading a bunch of actually racist bullshit.
I want to just my boss to tell me to get our university off Twitter. Does it even provide value anymore? It’s my least-engaged platform by far. I feel like people on Twitter just want politics and arguments.
Thanks for reading.
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3 Replies
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Getting rid of your account will look terrible. Did your university put out a statement? Participate in the BLM movement this week? I would suggest putting out one statement and not engaging with the negative comments. I too manage a very large organizations social media and it can be draining but deleting is not the answer. I have found people are just negative right now, there’s a lot going in in the world and people are lashing out where they can. Try not to take it personally and remember that this will pass.
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It’s awful. People are utilising the bandwagon to their advantage. Any form of resistance or logical thinking against the bandwagon will get you painted as a racist. It’s really dangerous.
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Do you run social media accounts for your university? There’s a Facebook group for higher ed social media managers that may interest you. Discussion about this kind of thing has been going on all week in that group.
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