Wednesday June 21, 2023 | LANGFORD, BC [Updated June 22, 2023]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
A new social media policy has been approved by the City of Langford.
This comes now largely due to offensive and possibly dangerous posts on social media in the community.
Until now — other than an Instagram page — the fast-growing modern municipality has not yet had a full-engagement process anywhere in the social media sphere. The City of Langford has been absent from the platforms that most community leaders and businesses use on a regular basis: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
City of Langford Council approved the city’s first Social Media Policy during their June 19, 2023 council meeting.
Clear guidelines:
The policy provides clear guidelines for staff, the public and Council on how to communicate effectively and appropriately on social media platforms.
The policy clearly defines the overall purpose of social media used for city business and spells out the nature of respectful, safe, and constructive dialogue. It also highlights safeguards regarding personal information, privacy, and accessibility.
Setting tone and expectations:
“This policy sets the tone and expectations around acceptable use of and engagement practices through City social media accounts,” said Langford Mayor, Scott Goodmanson.
“Recently, there has been utterly inappropriate dialogue on-line, including thinly veiled death threats, to members of Council. This is simply unacceptable and will not be tolerated. It is alarming and very disappointing that some members of the public believe it is acceptable to act in such an appalling manner towards elected officials,” said Goodmanson in a news release today.
“This Policy will allow for more robust two-way public engagement, a high priority for council, while ensuring a safe and respectful environment for everyone participating,” said Mayor Goodmanson.
Building staff capacity:
The City of Langford communications department has been working towards building staff capacity to better support council’s mandate for more rigorous public engagement. Part of the goal is to encourage constructive two-way communication with residents.
As part of this process, the city will soon establish a Facebook account (expected in the next few weeks) and will adhere to their new municipal Social Media Policy to support communication with residents.
The new policy supports City staff and Council in “the effective and responsible use of social media for the purpose of City business and aims to ensure that the City of Langford’s official social media accounts provide accurate, transparent, current and publicly accessible information on City policies, programs and services”.
Let’s Chat Langford:
As a further step, the City of Langford is launching an engagement portal called Let’s Chat Langford. The interface will be hosted within the City’s municipal website. Residents can register for updates by visiting letschatlangford.ca.
This is a significant technological undertaking which underscores the new council’s commitment to broader public engagement with residents and businesses.
Keeping this online chat within the municipal website also indicates the size and scope of city administration at this time, compared to years earlier. Within the 2023 city budget was new funding for more hiring more staff.
Each user at LetsChatLangford.ca can sign up for an account by creating a username and password, and indicating which neighbourhood they live in. Only the username will show online; the rest of the information is held privately in the database.
Tidying up the Langford online community presence:
The city’s new public engagement portal — and finally getting their own Facebook page — shows the city taking leadership with their public engagement.
This new range of online presence might help tamp down the plethora of Langford pages and groups on Facebook which are mostly highly politicized around particular issues or topics, which should not be confused with professional journalism.
The Island Social Trends page on Facebook delivers professional journalism about the broader west shore as well as some provincial news; there will also be an Island Social Trends print edition launching this summer as a spinoff from the popular IslandSocialTrends.ca news portal which is available to any readers online.
City not yet on Twitter:
The City of Langford chose Facebook for their external social media channel. Langford seems not to be venturing into a having a Twitter account just yet.
“The City has selected Facebook as an additional social media platform to have additional engagement with residents and businesses,” said the City in a statement to Island Social Trends. “We will consider other platforms in the future however, we are starting with Facebook. This has been the most requested platform by citizens as well,” it was stated.
It turns out that Facebook was chosen based on anecdotal comments to staff and members of council, the city confirmed. So that just depends on who is interfacing with the city on current issues.
Four city councillors maintain an active professional Twitter presence which has been helpful for that sector of the online social media community: Keith Yacucha, Mary J Wagner, Kimberley Guiry and Colby Harder.
Island Social Trends is on Twitter at @IslandSocTrends where local and regional news is posted.
As of June 22, 2023 Island Social Trends is no longer posting news on Facebook, due to Meta (Facebook’s parent company) saying they will block news distribution to Canadian users in response to the House of Commons passing legislation (Bill C18) requiring tech giants to make compensation agreements with news publishers for distribution of content generated by those publishers. As well, for at least a decade Facebook (and Google) have been chewing away at the traditional news publishing business model, and it makes no sense to continue feeding the hand that bites.
===== RELATED:
Island Social Trends drops Facebook (June 22, 2023)
===== ABOUT ISLAND SOCIAL TRENDS & the EDITOR:
Island Social Trends has been covering politics, business, education and communities through a socioeconomic lens since 2008 on south Vancouver Island (previously as West Shore Voice News, and before that both Sooke Voice News and MapleLine Magazine).
Island Social Trends posts news daily at islandsocialtrends.ca (2020-2023). A new bi-weekly print edition will launch in mid-July 2023, with the online news portal continuing robustly.
Mary P Brooke is the editor and publisher of Island Social Trends. Ms Brooke followed and wrote extensively about the COVID pandemic during 2020-2022, and continues to follow that topic as new developments arise. She has covered news of Sooke School District 62 (SD62) in-depth since 2014 and BC education more broadly for over 10 years; in 2022 she ran as a trustee candidate in SD62. In the west shore she also reports on West Shore Parks and Recreation. Mary Brooke is building a FOOD RESILIENCE NEWS ARCHIVE.
Ms Brooke now reports with the BC Legislative Press Gallery. Mary Brooke was awarded the McGeachy Prize in Journalism (University of Saskatchewan, 1981) and in 2023 year has been nominated for the Jack Webster Foundation Shelley Fralic Award honouring women whose work in journalism serves their community.
Among other qualifications, Ms Brooke holds a health sciences B.Sc. (Foods & Nutrition), a university Certificate in Public Relations, and an industry certificate in digital marketing.
Mary Brooke is actively covering the by-election in Langford-Juan de Fuca. | BY-ELECTION NEWS SECTION