{"id":69,"date":"2017-12-31T17:50:49","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T00:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/?p=69"},"modified":"2018-01-01T12:11:30","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T19:11:30","slug":"retention-and-disposition-in-the-age-of-social-media-by-james-goldie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"Retention and disposition in the age of social media<\/em> by James Goldie <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Deleted tweet by Donald Trump during the Alabama Republican primary. Preserved by <\/span>ProPublica<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

When President Donald Trump issues a tweet, the whole world takes notice. It\u2019s no surprise then that equal attention is paid <\/span>when he deletes one<\/span><\/a>. While the social media posts of Canadian politicians and government institutions may not garner quite the same attention, concerns are being raised nonetheless about how often similar deletions are occurring north of the 49th parallel. <\/span><\/p>\n

Several times this year, Conservative MPs have asked questions in the House of Commons about how often government entities (including departments, agencies, and crown corporations) delete social media posts and what reasons they have for doing so. In November, the government tabled a report<\/span>1<\/span> aimed at addressing the issue.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The documents reveal a range of practices among government agencies when it comes to deleting social media posts. It\u2019s important to note that in this report, \u201csocial media\u201d was defined as Facebook, Flickr, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Snapchat; \u201cposts\u201d referred not only to official messages from the government, but also comments by users.<\/span><\/p>\n

As reported by <\/span>iPolitics<\/span><\/a>, almost 1500 posts were deleted from government social media accounts between January 2016 and September 2017. The reasons for these deletions vary widely. Most often, departments cited errors (grammar, an incorrect link or image, premature publication, etc.) for deleting one of their own original posts.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Whose rules?<\/b><\/p>\n

Not every government body had deleted social media posts. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency were among those that said they had no deletions to report during the specified time period.<\/span><\/p>\n

Others, like the Department of Justice and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, simply reported they \u201c[do] not track the number of posts deleted\u201d, and left it at that. <\/span><\/p>\n

Of those that do keep track, some shared links to their respective departmental policies governing these decisions. However, upon closer examination, the policies \u2014 like <\/span>this one<\/span><\/a> linked to in the report by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada \u2014 only pertain to the deletion of user comments, not original posts by the government bodies themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, it\u2019s important to remember that these policies offer the public no insights into when and why a department may remove <\/span>its own <\/span><\/i>posts from sites like Facebook or Twitter. Also these policies may differ from department to department.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Evading accountability<\/b><\/p>\n

In September, following Roy Moore\u2019s defeat of Luther Strange in the Republicans\u2019 Alabama primary runoff, Trump deleted his tweets supporting the loser. A face-saving move? Possibly. But actions like this might also represent an attempt to skirt accountability.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watchdog groups in the U.S. <\/span>claim<\/span><\/a> the president\u2019s deleting of social media posts violates the Presidential Records Act, but what about Canadian government institutions?<\/span><\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Treasury Board Secretariat <\/span>provides rules<\/span><\/a> to all government departments for the management of communications, including social media, but there are no stated directives on when or why official government social media posts can be deleted.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Retention and disposition<\/b><\/p>\n

As discussed by Elizabeth Shepherd and Geoffrey Yeo in their book <\/span>Managing Records:<\/span><\/i><\/a>A handbook of principles and practice<\/span><\/i><\/a>, organizations and businesses should always have a schedule in place that dictates the length of time records will be kept, and when and how they will ultimately be destroyed. Such retention and disposition schedules help organizations to make transparent and rational decisions about how long to hold onto records. Shepherd and Yeo also write that these plans may be needed for legal defence, in order to show why certain records were destroyed. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIrregularities in destruction procedures can bring suspicion, if an organization is taken to court or if there is an access request under freedom of information laws, that records may have been destroyed with intent to suppress embarrassing evidence,\u201d they write. \u201cThe existence of a structured retention system allows the organization to prove that any destruction took place as part of normal business practice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no denying that social media posts \u2014 generated during the ordinary course of a government department\u2019s operations \u2014 are records. For this reason, they should be subject to retention and disposition schedules like any other departmental record.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Treasury Board empowers each department\u2019s head of communications with the authority to create social media accounts, approve social media strategies, and ultimately to \u201cdispose of\u201d official accounts. As a result, there is no government-wide consistency in terms of social media retention and disposition practices. This is why the recent report in parliament revealed that some departments keep very clear records about each deleted social media post while others keep no records of them at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Responsible deletion<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna\u2019s official Twitter account (<\/span>@ec_minister<\/span><\/a>) \u00a0deleted an embarrassing tweet about Syria in early November. McKenna\u2019s follow-up tweet via her personal account (<\/span>@cathmckenna<\/span><\/a>) appears to have also been deleted.<\/span><\/h6>\n

The need to quickly or unexpectedly delete a post will always exist. That\u2019s the nature of social media. The question becomes how is a government entity or politician held accountable should the need arise to hastily remove an ill-conceived post?<\/span><\/p>\n

Retention and disposition schedules are one way. <\/span><\/p>\n

But even with these in place, there will be times when a post has to be deleted (destroyed) before its scheduled disposition. In these cases, a mandatory follow-up post, acknowledging the deletion, might be one way to prevent a record from prematurely vanishing completely.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier this month, federal environment minister Catherine McKenna <\/span>found herself in hot water<\/span><\/a> when her official government Twitter account issued a tweet praising Syria for signing on to the Paris climate agreement. The tweet, since deleted, was publicly decried and widely reported on, with McKenna apologizing for the mistake. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI tweeted personally to say that it was unacceptable,\u201d she <\/span>told reporters<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, an advanced search on Twitter reveals no posts mentioning Syria on either her official departmental Twitter or personal account in the month of November, suggesting any subsequent tweets about the embarrassing episode were also deleted. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s incidents like this that exemplify a need for formal rules about how Canadian government officials dispose of records in the social media age. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NOTES:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u00a0Canada. Order\/Address of the House of Commons. Library of Parliament. Q-1129. Nov 3 2017.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Deleted tweet by Donald Trump during the Alabama Republican primary. Preserved by ProPublica.   When President Donald Trump issues a tweet, the whole world takes notice. It\u2019s no surprise then that equal attention is paid when he deletes one. While the social media posts of Canadian politicians and government institutions may not garner quite the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3100255,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-transformation","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/54249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}