Managing social media within the disability space
The use of social media has become ubiquitous across a variety of industries, and the disability space is no exception.
Throughout the course of your professional life, you may have noticed that social media use has had both benefits and risks. This article discusses these and provides tips for creating social media policies that strike a balance between being social and being safe.
Benefits of social media use
Social media is a convenient tool for raising awareness of your organisation and its values. By maintaining an active online presence you can harness the power of social media to:
increase the visibility of your services
share your organisation’s key milestones
undertake fundraising and crowdfunding
connect with other organisations and expand your professional network.
In addition, social media can be a helpful educational tool. It can be used to:
keep up-to-date with the latest developments within the disability space
join relevant online communities
share your experiences and findings with other professionals
learn about and attend virtual professional development events.
Risks of social media use
However, despite the benefits mentioned above, irresponsible use of social media can lead to severe personal and professional consequences.
These consequences can extend across your organisation. Some of the key risks associated with social media include:
breach of participant privacy and confidentiality
breach of participant consent
the sharing of poor quality, unverified information
the compromising of professional boundaries between participants and workers
defamation of participants and/or workers
unintended exposure of personal information
the posting of content that does not accurately reflect your organisation or its values.
Practical guidelines for the disability space
To prevent harmful use of social media within your organisation, it is important to have appropriate policy structures in place. Your social media policy must acknowledge the usefulness of social media while having the guidelines in place to manage key risks.
Helpful guidelines you may want to consider implementing are outlined below.
Although having a social media policy is not a core part of the NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Framework, any organisation utilising social media must implement a safe and structured approach. This approach should include policy documents that comply with ethical and legislative standards around employee responsibilities, privacy, confidentiality, consent and professional boundaries.
The scope of social media usage within the disability space is vast. In some clinical settings, there has been an outright ban. By contrast, some community-focused organisations have harnessed the power of social media to increase the visibility of their services. You may find yourself at either one of these extremes or somewhere in the middle. When it comes to your organisation, you have the power to make this decision.