The social media guidelines apply to faculty, staff, students and any affiliates/consultants of Central Washington University who participate in social media for and on behalf of Central Washington University. Central Washington University supports the use of social media to share news, events, and important information related to the university. These guidelines provide faculty, staff and students with the tools to use social platforms on behalf of the university. These guidelines apply to all social media engagement on behalf of CWU for both departmental and individual professional use. These guidelines provide suggestions on protecting personal and professional reputation of students, faculty, staff, and the university while using social media. The guidelines ensure university social media sites are legal and ethical.
For any university social media site, the social media profile and/or icon photos must comply with the university brand standards.
Administrators must request permission from the Public Affairs social media coordinator to hide or delete any content in violation of this policy.
Administrators must request permission to block a user from a social media platform by contacting the Public Affairs social media coordinator.
Content for the social media sites must be public information only and should not be used for any business transactions or release of confidential records.
Content for the university social media sites may include photos, audio, and video but cannot infringe on the intellectual property rights of others.
It is encouraged to link all material to the source of the post whenever possible. This helps provide accurate information to the public.
Social Media: forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, idea, personal messages, and other content (such as videos).
Copyright: the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same.
Copyright 101
The information provided below is intended to provide additional social media guideline information and best practices for the common social media platforms used on behalf of the university.
Central Washington University encourages commenting and responding on our social media channels. Thoughtful discussion and debate are accepted as long as they follow the comment guidelines. Central Washington University is not responsible for published comments and discussion does not reflect CWU viewpoints or opinions. CWU is not responsible for the individual commenting on CWU owned social media channels.
CWU reserves the right to hide or remove comments or posts, without notice to the publisher, that do not comply with the CWU guidelines as well as with the guidelines of the social media channel.
Debate, discussion, and interaction must be respectful and relative to the published content. Opinions, debates, and/or disagreements must be constructive and refrain from obscenities, profanities, threatening, harassing, discriminatory, hate speech, abusive content, personal attacks, and defamatory comments. Other comments and/or published content that CWU reserves the right to remove are indecent, sexually explicit, or include personal, confidential information. No spam or promotion of products will be accepted.