To: Dr. Stice
From: Austyn Hewitt
Subject: Social Media Policy
When looking up a social media policy to learn more about I chose ESPN. I chose ESPN because a lot of the business is done over some sort of social media. https://www.espnfrontrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/social-networking-v2-2011.pdf.
“Social Networking For talent and reports’ goes over how ESPN expects employees to behave on the Internet involving social networking. The policy goes over what ESPN considers social media such as “Twitter, Facebook, message boards, and conversational pages.’ They expect behavior on social media to be equivalent to behavior that would be on their televised reports. That means if a spokes person on ESPN cannot say or act a certain way on TV that behavior is also not acceptable on social media. The policy also goes over that an employee is always associated with ESPN even when they are not working so their behavior needs to be appropriate at all time. This means that just because one is off work at the moment that they post something on the Internet that they must still follow the policy.
The first section of the policy just goes over what are the guidelines for behavior on social media and another section of the policy goes over what can be said about sports. The reason there are policies regarding posting about sports is to prevent an employee from giving incorrect information to the Internet or if one expressed an opinion that is not appropriate. If an employee says something negative about an athlete or a sports team the audience could associate that opinion with ESPN having that opinion also and that would make the business look bad. The policy regarding making sports post says that an employee must get permission from their supervisor before making the post.
I think that this policy is clear and easy to interpret for employees. It is written in such a way that it is not coming off as aggressive but more like an understanding between employee and employer. If I were to work at ESPN I would not have any issue with following these guidelines. I agree that no matter were a place of employment is for someone that there is a basic way to act on or off social media.