Social Media Policy Development and Communication

Pretend you work for the Athletics Department at FSU (or another university of your choosing). After an incident in which a student-athlete was posting inappropriate content on social media the Athletics Department has tasked you with the responsibility of developing and communicating a new policy for appropriate yet still engaging social media use for student-athletes. Applying the Case Method Analysis Steps for Developing Policy develop a policy for appropriate social media use in intercollegiate athletics as well as a plan to communicate this policy to everyone who needs to know about it (i.e. student-athletes coaches etc.). According to your textbook “Building the fan base by retaining current fans and recruiting new ones is core to using social media technologies today and Athletic Departments have hired whole units of media directors and graphic designers to effectively communicate their messages. However a double standard has developed in many Athletic Departments related to social media use by athletes. University Athletic Departments have enacted policies to control and limit an athlete’s use of social media characterizing it as risky to the image and brand of the team. While athletes’ social media use will likely be monitored by Athletic Department personnel for content preventing athletes from using social media is undoubtedly a concern for their personal freedom. Governing bodies such as the NCAA have hesitated to create policy on this issue likely because of the difficulty inherent to monitoring it and the legal issues associated with doing so. Coaches have voiced concerns within departments because of the potential competitive impact when an athlete announces an injury on Twitter or a recruit changes her mind about attending a school because of some off-hand heated comments. This is why many Athletic Departments and teams have created policy for the use of social media. Importantly athletes need to be trained about the publicity “fishbowl” that is college athletics where what they do and say is magnified and of interest to millions. Athletes are being coached to use social media minimally and appropriately and to understand the negative impact it can have for future jobs. Policy that balances the positives and negatives of this issue is required” (MacLean and Hums 2018 p. 209-210). For the second case study assignment students are required to apply the Case Method Analysis Steps for Developing Policy to develop a policy for appropriate social media use in intercollegiate athletics. To complete this assignment students should be essentially pretending they work for the Athletics Department at FSU (or another university of your choosing) and that they have been tasked with developing policy for appropriate yet still engaging social media use for student-athletes. To develop such a policy for student-athlete social media use follow these steps:

STEP 1.) Use a search engine (i.e. Google) to look up FSUs (or another university of your choosing) social media policy for student-athletes.

STEP 2.) Briefly outline the dos and donts of the policy for appropriate social media use for student-athletes.

STEP 3.) Outline what you think some of the pros (provide THREE examples) and cons (provide THREE examples) of the policy are and provide justifications for each of the pros and cons discussed.

STEP 4.) How do you think the policy could be improved? Apply the Case Method Analysis Steps for Developing Policy (exhibit 3.5) to improve the current policy for social media use (SEE TEXTBOOK!).

STEP 5.) How will you communicate the new policy to ensure student-athletes understand what is expected of them in the new policy? For this step you must develop a procedure for communicating the policy to student-athletes coaches etc. (see textbook). In your response for how you will communicate the new policy you must provide examples of appropriate social media use that are in line with these policies to show concrete examples of what appropriate posts might look like. To do this create at least one example social media post for each of the following social media platforms:

i) Tiktok (record it in TikTok save it etc.);ii) Twitter;iii) Snapchat (record it in SC save it etc.) Responses should be 1000-1200 words in length demonstrate critical thought and connect to the course materials. Responses can be in bullet-point form but it must still be written in full sentences. All sources should be cited in APA format (in-text and bibliography). **IMPORTANT! Your submission for CASE STUDY #1 (including your TikTok Twitter and Snapchat examples) must be submitted in a SINGLE DOCUMENT. Additionally it is the students responsibility to make sure all necessary components are submitted appropriately. As such I suggest that all students take a screenshot of their submission (that includes the documents included and the date and time of submission) as proof of submission if technical difficulties occur.

Requirements: 1000 – 1200 words