Thandi Smith. from Media Monitoring Africa. spoke at the East Rand Business Women’s meeting, held at Summer Place recently, about the overview of social media use in South Africa.
According to Smith, social media is being infiltrated into every aspect of people’s lives whether it is through personal interactions with one another, family groups, friends or companies’ social media pages.
She said social media guidelines and policies are infiltrated into the communication policies and workplaces and no one really understands how to go about using social media in an appropriate manner.
“There isn’t one set of rules or regulation, but it is about what you do on social media and what you shouldn’t do. “Social media is still a space which is highly contested as a regulator point of view because it is difficult to pin down the exact laws and policies that deal with such kind of communication.
“When it comes to freedom of expression everyone seems to have this entitlement that they can say whatever they like to say on social media without realising the repercussions. Anything said on social media is being recorded and what you say online can’t be easily deleted,” Smith said.
Smith highlighted that on social media there are still issues relating to sexual harassment and cyberbullying, targeting women especially.
“In all of this social media frenzy, no one seems to notice the small things that filter through the channel without it being taken seriously.
“Social media has its own policies and these are what you see every time you join one of these platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and others. It is important that when you sign in into these social media pages you need to know what you are signing up for,” she said.
Speaking of Facebook, she said that when a person publishes his or her information or content in the public settings it means they are allowing everyone including those who don’t have Facebook to access this information.
“It is important to be careful because if the content is considered public, people who don’t have Facebook can see that information and not many people are aware of that.
“Instagram is one of the worst social media platforms when it comes to privacy policies and who owns the content.
When you sign into Instagram, it says Instagram does not claim ownership of any content that you post, instead you hereby grant Instagram a non-exclusive free paid content. So, this means that when you post your pictures on Instagram, you allow Instagram to use the pictures without compensating you because you agreed to the terms and conditions
Referring to Twitter, Smith said what you say on Twitter services may be viewed by people all around the world instantly. You are therefore what you tweet so be careful of what you tweet.
The legal implications of using social media is that if you are not careful of what you post and say, there can be legal issues involved like defamation, sexual offences, harassment, cyberbullying, bridge of policies and copyright. “You need to understand the law and understand what is legal or is not legal in social media
Smith shared some of the tips and guidelines of how to use social media effectively.
- Be honest about who you are.
- Be respectful to the rights of others, measured against your freedom of expression.
- Respect the purpose of the community you are posting in.
- The internet knows who you are and does not forget this or forget the content you post.
- Avoid indecent materials.
- Never write something you wouldn’t say out in public.
- Remember: Social media allows instantaneous messaging and makes it very difficult to correct an error. Make sure what you post is accurate.
- Ask yourself: is this my story to tell?
