Victorian Government Social Media Operational Guidelines

Social media provides unique opportunities for Victorian Government departments and agencies to engage with Victorians. Departments and agencies can build a profile and generate a social media following by opening up a two-way conversation with the public. These interactions can help increase the reach of your social media posts but there are risks, including being sued for defamation. This is particularly important in the context of the recent High Court case of Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd v Voller where the Court held that an entity that operates social media accounts can be considered the publisher of third-party comments¹ and could be liable in defamation for such comments.

These guidelines help provide a best practice guide for Victorian Government departments and agencies to meet the standards set out in the Social Media Operational Policy.

These guidelines do not cover the use of social media for personal or workplace communications (Microsoft Teams), or department or agency-specific social media policies. For guidance on personal use, refer to the Code of Conduct for Victorian Public Sector Employees.

These guidelines focus on social media moderation. For more information on general social media operation, read your entity’s social media documents and visit the Use social media guide and Social media branding – digital guide.

Footnotes

1 See Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd v Voller; Nationwide News Pty Limited v Voller; Australian News Channel Pty Ltd v Voller [2021] HCA 27.

Managing social media requires planning, resources, and good governance. There is a time commitment, responsibility for creating content, defamation risk assessment and mitigation, listening to what is happening and responding when needed and managing communities and stakeholders should any conversation turn negative.

When developing your social media strategy, consider the following:

• Do you have the resources (time, people, budget) to manage, monitor and moderate?
• Have authorisations, roles and responsibilities been defined?
• Do you have a clear workflow with assigned roles? This can include authorised administrators, content generation, content approval and escalation, reporting and administration.
• Do you understand your audience?
• What will spark converation? (Positive and negative)
• How are you prepared to deal with the conversation if it turns negative?
• How will user feedback be processed and acted upon? Is there an agreed process for escalation?
• How will you respond so users know you are listening to them?
• Do you have a clear structure and strategy for each of your social media platforms, including standards for tone, copy, images, and videos?
• Have you considered a risk assessment and or issues management guide to plan for any risks that may affect your channels?
• Will you have training and ongoing support to enable a psychologically and culturally safe work environment for content moderators?
• Have you considered what evidence you may need to retain from your record’s comment sections to meet public sector record keeping obligations?

If the social media account is used for paid advertising, moderation of the account is up to departments and agencies to determine roles and responsibilities with regards to comment moderation.

Please note, that depending on the target audience and budgeted reach, paid social media campaigns may have greater impacts to consider. This can include factors such as the social media content reaching a new audience – a majority of which have not previously interacted with the Victorian Government/department content. You should consider appropriate moderation staffing levels accordingly.

Risk mitigation involves identifying known risks, issues or potential opponents to your planned messages and campaigns, and how you plan to react to these risks or respond to them. This can be in the form of prepared responses to likely questions or documenting agreed processes to handle posts, comments or replies that are abusive or threatening, or negative sentiment about a project or issue. A Risks and Mitigation Action template is available in Appendix A.

It’s important to plan how to reduce the likelihood of such risks occurring. Identifying campaigns or messages that are more likely to give rise to potentially defamatory comments can help determine whether comments on posts should be either pre-moderated or as a last resort - disabled. Creating a plan for community management and moderation can help reduce defamation risk before posting by considering:

• whether the nature of the material is particularly controversial
• whether the material refers to a specific individual, or is likely to facilitate and encourage comments regarding a specific individual
• whether the comments are likely to relate to persons associated with the agency, or more likely to relate to third parties
• the approach that a department or agency might wish to take if one of its employees is named in the comment section of the department or agency’s post
• whether third-party comments are likely to be critical, as opposed to positive.

These factors can then inform the response set out in Moderation tools page.

Social Media accounts tend to change over time with audiences moving to the next best platform. We recommend completing an annual audit of your accounts to ensure they are meeting their aims. This would be in addition to regular reports and analysis. Sometimes it isn’t always best to have an account for each platform – you should consider where your audience really is and if you are reaching them.

When setting up an audit consider evaluating the following:

• Engagement
• Reach
• Account goals i.e. business and user needs
• Time spent managing the account
• Targeted audience vs. audience reached
• Any issues and risks that have been identified
• Paid campaign performance Vs organic engagement
• Click through traffic
• Whether current record keeping practices are adequate

When posting on an official government social media account, messages (posts, comments and direct messages) created or received by a public officer should be managed as a public record in accordance with the Public Records Act 1973. You should be keeping all records as required by your department, including any contextual metadata. It is a statutory requirement. However, every government entity has varied requirements for how long each record should be kept and the recording method. Visit the Public Record Office Victoria’s guide for more information on how to comply with your social media record keeping obligations, visit the Public Records Office Victoria website.

You can capture social media records manually by screenshotting messages, downloading inbox data from social media scheduling software (linking original posts and assets to the comments) or by utilising a records management software. Agencies should seek only to capture personal information when it is necessary to the agency’s activities or functions and de-identify information that is no longer needed for any purpose. For more information on the privacy requirements for record keeping, please visit PROV’s guide on privacy requirements.

As part of their obligations, social media teams should – at a minimum – be recording the following information:

• Date and time the message was sent or received
• For messages sent from your account: the name of the public officer that sent the message, who authorised the message, and to whom it was sent
• For messages sent to your account: The public officer (if different from who sent the original message) and account name that received the message, the person to whom it was sent, and the name used by the person who posted the message (no need to determine the sender’s actual identity)
• The purpose (context) of the message
• The name of the social media application that the message was published on.

An example is available in Appendix B.

Records will need to be retained in line with a relevant retention and disposal authority, and be disposed of lawfully in accordance with a disposal instrument authorised by the Keeper of Public Records. See your agency’s records/information management team for information on how your agency manages records.

Community guidelines

Community management plays a significant role in managing risk.

All social media accounts must have community guidelines. This sets out what is and is not allowed in the comments of your social media account (see Appendix C).

Moderation guide

Effective monitoring and moderation can remove the risk of a conversation with a member of the public getting out of hand, discourage spam, trolls and social media users who post comments with the intention of simply causing arguments or stirring up controversy.

Having moderation guidelines can help with identifying content that requires a response and the type of response required. Typical reactions to comments include:

Please note, not all options are available on all platforms.

Ensure there is always at least one person available within your stated hours of moderation to listen to what is happening and respond when needed. A moderation guide template is available in Appendix D or develop your own to suit your communication needs and have these checked by your department’s legal team before proceeding.

When moderating in a team it is good practice to inform other team members on posts/ comments of interest and mitigatory actions.

Adherence to WoVG standards – ensure that:

• members of the public receive timely responses to genuine queries and requests for information
• queries and responses can be tracked, and responses are managed in accordance with relevant legislation: the Public Records Act 1973 (Vic), the Public Administration Act 2004, the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic), the Public Administration (Public Sector Communication) Regulations 2018 (Vic), the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic), and the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic).

Consider utilising each social media platforms moderation tools, including:

Profanity filters

• Profanity filters use algorithms to censor offensive words, swearing, and other forms of bad language.

Filtering out specific words (and emojis)

• Facebook has the option to cut out specific words not covered under its profanity filter.
• You can choose up to 1,000 keywords, phrases, or emojis to block from your page, which will automatically hide variations of the word too.

Limiting who can comment on your posts

• By adjusting the commenting audience, you can limit who can comment in the first place. This function works on organic but not paid posts.
• The drawback is that comments bring more attention to your post, as your post is then more likely to appear in the news feed of people who follow the commenter.

Turn off comments

• If you think a post is likely to invite harmful comments or contains particularly sensitive information or material, it might be worth disabling or limiting the comments on the post. Using this function frequently may limit your following and interactivity as it takes away the opportunity for engagement and dialogue. We recommend for you to only use this option when absolutely required.
• Turning off comments can result in low content rank meaning fewer people will see your post. Always aim to moderate comments rather than turn comments off.
• However, you might consider turning off comments particularly when moderators are not rostered.
• Note comments may be turned off on social media paid advertising.

Increasing moderation

• For posts that attract particularly potentially defamatory comments, increase moderation efforts for a period. This may include turning off comments for a period, for instance outside of work hours.

Publishing comments after moderation

• If the platform allows it, publish comments by third parties (made in ‘real time’) only after a moderator has approved them. This is not available on social media paid advertising.

Hide Replies

• Tweet authors have the option to hide replies to their tweets. When a tweet author hides a reply, the author of the reply will not be notified.

Decide not to publish the post

• If the post is expected to draw large amounts of backlash and your team does not have the resourcing to adequately monitor and moderate responses, consider not publishing the post.

Direct messaging

If your pages have direct messaging turned on, you should consider setting out monitoring strategies in your community guidelines and moderation guide.

For example, planning potential actions required when a member of the public messages the page and their contact details are needed for additional support to an inquiry.

Official social media accounts need to have an approved complaints handling process with a publicly accessible version. The process will need to include steps that individuals (including small not for profits and companies) can take to make a complaint about an alleged defamatory comment against them and to seek its removal.

If you receive a complaint in which an individual is claiming they’ve been defamed on your social media platform, the best way to manage the risk is to capture the comment/post, remove the comment/post, followed by a quick apology for any hurt or distress caused by the comment/post. You should notify and confer with your legal team about the drafting of any apology.

A full and prompt apology and retraction in connection with a defamatory matter does not constitute an admission of fault or liability and may be relevant to mitigation of damages.

Content moderators can be exposed to secondary traumatic stress (brought on by continued and prolonged exposure to abusive, threatening, distressing or disturbing images and information).

To help ensure moderators are safe at work, teams must place importance on proactive support. This section places emphasis on providing sufficient staffing levels to handle demand and support moderators with downtime away from moderating.

Please note that this does not supersede the requirements outlined in your Enterprise Agreement.

It is up to each entity to identify moderation staffing levels based on the comments and possible exposure to secondary traumatic stress.

For example, a staff member moderating for 4 days in a row being exposed to abusive, threatening, distressing or disturbing content may need a period of at least 48 hours away from moderation.

Each entity must also regularly review appropriate staffing levels to deal with the level of messages, comments, replies and mentions per week. This may include support during peak periods and when advertising is running.

Entities with significant levels of messages, comments, mentions and replies could consider engaging customer service or contact centre teams within that entity if they have capability in social media management.

As outlined in the Whole of Government Social Media Moderation Policy, a Victorian Government entity should conduct its own assessment as to whether it requires a specific policy due to an increased likelihood of defamatory comments occurring on its social media posts. A tailored policy could subsequently be developed, which considers among other things, the entity’s resources which would include its staffing levels.

It is important to manage the health and wellbeing of staff when moderating. Moderators can be impacted by the continual, and at times negative, nature of social media including the comment sections. To help ensure moderators are safe at work, teams should consider a holistic proactive approach to mental health and wellbeing.

The following practices should be implemented into your moderation work:

• Moderators should be allowed the opportunity to opt out of specific topics that they know or expect will be disturbing to them
• Built-in breaks – it is good practice to require moderators to take breaks every two hours to prevent prolonged exposure to the content in their workflow. It will also encourage them to interact socially with co-workers which is a known preventative measure for mental health and wellbeing
• Utilise managers for regular debriefing after exposure to disturbing content
• Encourage moderators to utilise the available EAP Support services
• Increase competencies of managers and team leaders in identifying signs of vicarious trauma and stress outcomes
• Train moderation staff in self-identifying signs of vicarious trauma and stress outcomes.

The basic template below can be used to document risks and suggested actions.

Please note that most of the identified risks will require records, including any justifications for the mitigation action, to be captured.

As it is not provided in the screenshot, the following information will be required to be stored in a document:

• time it was sent or received
• the name of the public officer that sent the message, who authorised the social media message
• The name of the social media application that the message was published on.

Sample Guidelines - Comprehensive

We value the comments and contributions we receive on social media.

While we encourage people to join the conversation, we will not tolerate disrespectful, offensive, crude, hateful or irrelevant comments or comments that make another person feel unsafe.

Please keep all comments and discussion respectful and courteous. We may remove or report posts, comments, or links that we consider:

• discriminatory, potentially defamatory, false, or misleading, racist, off-topic, inflammatory, repetitive, offensive or otherwise inappropriate
• disrespectful toward another person
• to make another person feel unsafe
• commercial content, advertisements, or spam
• campaigning for a product, service, cause or initiative
• infringement of the privacy, intellectual property or legal rights of others
• any other material we consider to be inappropriate.

We retain the right to block a user whose posts or comments include any of the above.

The views, opinions, and information expressed in user-generated comments remain with the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Victorian Government.

If you have any questions relating to these guidelines, please contact us.

Sample Guidelines – Condensed

With our social media channels, the Victorian Government will:

• endeavour to remove any inappropriate, offensive, or defamatory comments
• leave what you share that relates to the subjects covered on this page
• endeavour to respond to comments that ask questions in a timely manner.

Aside from our posts, comments posted to this page do not represent the opinions of the Victorian Government.

Responses may only be provided during business hours.

Sample Guidelines - Facebook group or general forum

<The primary purpose of this page/group is to <insert purpose>.

This Page/Group is not a promotional vehicle. Any blatant advertising (as deemed by the administrators) will be removed from the group and the member will be warned. If advertising from the member continues to occur, the member will be notified and removed from the group.

We encourage sharing useful information, but we ask that all members respect copyright and fair use principles. Always give people proper credit for their work and content.

Unacceptable behaviour is your responsibility.

Please be responsible for what you write.

We have the right to remove anyone who:

• Blatantly advertises within the group
• Spams the platform or its members
• Is obtrusive and/or disruptive
• Uses inappropriate language such as swearing
• Is derogatory or defamatory, discriminatory or makes socially unacceptable, inflammatory comments
• Attempts to engage in overt political or religious debates and arguments.

If a comment breaches the above guidelines, it will be removed, and the commenter will be sent a private message with a warning their comment is against the guidelines. If a breach occurs a second time (or is severe in nature) the commenter will be blocked/removed.

Please note these are only examples. A government entity should conduct its own assessment as to whether it requires a specific moderation workflow due to an increased likelihood of defamatory comments occurring on its social media posts. A tailored policy could subsequently be developed, which considers the entity’s objectives, resources, and nature of its social media posts.

Department of Health Moderation Framework Example

Template

Welcome to the official Facebook page of the (insert entity).

Read our community guidelines before posting – (insert link to guidelines).

Our vision is to (insert vision statement).

(Information on entity responsibility/ role in program area).

(Information on the purpose of the account).

This page is monitored by (insert entity name) Monday to Friday, 9 am - 5 pm AEST.

To get in contact for general enquiries or any feedback/ complaints contact us here (insert contact details). (Link to entity’s privacy information).

Example – Victoria Police

Victoria Police administers various social media platforms to engage with members of the community and provide important safety and public interest information.

DO NOT USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO REQUEST POLICE ASSISTANCE.

In an emergency, call Triple Zero (000).

Find your nearest police station - https://www.police.vic.gov.au/location

To report non-urgent crimes and incidents, call the Police Assistance Line on 131 444 or visit - www.police.vic.gov.au/palolr

We encourage members of the community to engage with us on all official social networks.

However, in order to ensure our page is a welcoming and safe place for all members of our community we ask that you:

• Be respectful of others and their opinions
• Do not harass, abuse or threaten other visitors to the page
• Do not post comments that are likely to offend others, particularly in reference to an individual’s race, age, gender, sexuality, political leaning, religion or disability
• Do not use obscene or offensive language
• Do not post defamatory comments
• Do not promote anything that may constitute spam, such as commercial interests, solicitations, advertisements or endorsements of any non-governmental agency.

To protect your personal privacy, do not include email addresses, phone numbers or home addresses in public posts or comments.

Any posts or comments that violate these terms will be deleted and you may even be banned from the page.

Comments on our page do not represent the opinions of Victoria Police.

For full terms: www.police.vic.gov.au/social-media-terms-use