Case Story: Moderating School Facebook Groups

Summary	A case-study about a school Facebook group
Group / workshop	Digital Identities	Status	seed
Project details...

Situation

What was the setting in which this case study occurred?

This is a real case-study in which I was involved but I wasn't the central party.  On that basis, I'm telling it in a largely anonymous way.

Until recently, I was Chair of Governors at a primary school in Bath.  In that role I worked with a number of full and acting head teachers.  Towards the end of my time as a governor a Facebook group for the school was set up by an ex-pupil (then based in Liverpool).  The group was not formally endorsed (or even acknowledged) by the school but use was made of the school logo (and a link was made back to the school web site) and this was not discouraged.

The Facebook group became fairly active, receiving a fairly large number of old school photos (interesting in itself sinse the school had never allowed photos of children on its Web site) and a number of threads of discussion, including one about pupils' favorite teacher.

As far as I know, no members of the senior management team were members of Facebook.  Some of the more junior members of staff were, though they did not seem to be aware of the group as far as I know.

As an interested party, I exchanged various messages with the owner of the Facebook group and posted a couple of wall messages describing recent changes at the school.

Following my resignation as a governor I became aware (via a member of staff) that there were some problems with the Facebook group.  Specifically, there had been several unsubstantiated and negative messages in one of the group discussion threads about an ex-head teacher (the first head teacher that I had worked with at the school) both about his professional conduct and his private life.  This had clearly upset one of his close family members who had written (obviously in a state of agitation) on the group's wall.

Task

What was the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?

The school approached me (via the current head teacher) for advice about what to do.  Ideally, they appeared to want the group to be shut down partly because they felt that the group was closely associated with the school because it was making use of the school logo.

I advised against this, largely on the basis that doing so would be counter productive and that the vast bulk of the material in the group was very positive.

However, it was clear that some form of action was necessary, given how upset people were.

Actions

What was done to fulfil the task?

I approached the group owner (who admitted that he hadn't had time to properly keep up with what was happening in the discussion forums) and we agreed the following actions:

- the offending comments would be deleted immediately (this was not unmdertaken lightly but on balance was felt to be necessary in this case)

- i would write to the group wall giving my views on the nature of the comments and the legacy of the head teacher concerned

- the Facebook group owner would broaden the base of group officers to include other ex-pupils, staff and governors

Results

What happened? Was is a success? What contributed to the outcomes?

These actions were taken and the group appears to have settled down to normality.

It is not clear what long term damage, if any, was done to the head teacher concerned.  There is no lasting visible evidence of the offending messages (though I presume they still exist in the bowels of Facebook somewhere) but clearly they would have been seen by members of the group for the time that they were public.

There was always the danger that reacting too strongly to the messages (e.g. by closing down the group) would have given more weight than was appropriate to the content of the messages.

Lessons Learned

What did you learn from the experience?

Digital identity is an aggregation of what you say about yourself and what others say about you (and you don't always have much control over the latter).

Licensing

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.