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Tony McNeill
1
Module 4: Approaches to the Analysis of Education Policy
 
Essay title: 'Don't affect the share price': Social media policy in higher education as brand management 
 
I
ntroduction
 
This study considers the social media policies of ten universities in the UnitedKingdom. It addresses some of the ways in which HEIs are responding toboth the positive potential of social media as well as its perceived threats. Itargues that the development of social media policies has been taken inresponse to both the promise of social media in promoting university µbrands¶as well as the threat to institutional reputation. The creation andimplementation of social media policies have therefore played a key role inhelping universities manage both the risks and benefits of social media in thecontext of a marketised HE environment in which the defence of institutionalreputation has become an increasing priority.
 
R
esearcher positionality
 
I am currently Principal Lecturer in Learning Technology at KingstonUniversity, a medium-sized post-'92 university in the south of England. I ambased, not in a faculty, but in the Academic Development Centre, a centraldepartment dedicated to academic staff development and to the making and
 
Tony McNeill
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implementation of the Kingston University¶s Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy. I have played some role in developing this strategy - akind of policy if you like - especially the sections relating to educationaltechnologies. Although I have not been directly involved in developinginstitutional social media policy, I am in regular contact with colleagues -notably those from both Information Services and Marketing andCommunications - who are. As such, I might be said to enjoy something of theµepistemological privilege¶ of being an µinsider¶ researcher and am thereforeable to gain insights which, as Colin Lankshear and Michel Knobel (2006)remind us, µare
sights
from the
in
side¶ (247-8).
 
I should also add that I am, for primarily professional purposes, a regular user of social media; I have both Facebook(http://www.facebook.com/) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/)accounts which I use for work- and study-relatedpurposes. I also have accounts on Slideshare(http://www.slideshare.net/),Prezi(http://prezi.com/), Scribd(http://www.scribd.com/) and Flickr  (http://www.flickr.com/) where I store and share images, papers andpresentations. Finally, I have active accounts on LinkedIn(http://www.linkedin.com/) and Academia.edu(http://academia.edu/) for  additional professional networking purposes.When I use social media am I representing myself or my institution? My initialanswer is, of course, myself. However, is it really possible to blog or to tweetin a wholly individual capacity that does not invoke in any way one¶sinstitutional affiliation? When I post an off-the-cuff and uncomplimentary tweet
 
Tony McNeill
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about current HE policy (see Fig. 1), I do so as an individual academicexpressing a personal opinion to those who follow me.
Fig. 1: tweet articulating personal opinion
However, might my tweet be perceived to be representing an institutional(Kingston University) or possibly departmental (Academic DevelopmentCentre) viewpoint? In using social media to articulate a position hostile to agovernment policy that I may - perhaps will - later have to help implement, amI not undermining the work of my department or institution? It¶s an ambiguousarea that, as I will argue, clearly-defined social media policies seek toaddress.
 
My research for this essay adopts a more deductive approach insofar as myµinsiderness¶ has allowed me to develop the hypothesis that the making of social media policy in higher education is a response to the perceived threatof reputational damage to institutions caused by unregulated andunsupervised social media use by both staff and students. Although I will alsoargue that advising staff of IPR, copyright, liability, data protection issues andgeneral good practice are also an important part of social media policy, for 
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