Social Media Policy

The purpose of this Policy is to:

• Clearly establish who has access to and authority to use NAVA’s social media, and the terms on which that access and use is granted. 
• Clearly establish standards of conduct and communication that authorised employees must meet when accessing and using NAVA’s social media.
• To ensure that all organisation communication via social media with stakeholders, the media and other external sources is consistent, appropriate, accurate, timely and is authorised to be released (i.e. is not confidential).
• To provide guidelines for conduct when using personal social media profiles where any reference, whether direct or indirect, is made to NAVA.

This policy applies to all employees, including any person who is employed on a full-time, part-time, contract or casual basis and any other persons otherwise engaged by NAVA to undertake work.

An employee’s work for NAVA will involve access to confidential information. This information should not be made available or discussed with anyone outside the organisation including members of the public, the media or other organisations.

Employees are required to exercise professional discretion online. This includes not revealing information about your co-workers and interactions with Members and other constituents. Engaging in gossip is unprofessional and damaging. Employees must not use information gained in the course of their employment to cause harm or detriment to NAVA, or any person.

An employee and representative of NAVA is expected to demonstrate best practices and appropriate etiquette on social media, including but not limited to the following:

• Be respectful to all
• No hate speech, bullying, abusive or disrespectful correspondence in any forum
• No sharing of confidential company information
• Tolerance for a diversity of opinions
• Favour respectful debate.

Only Authorised Users may undertake social media activity utilising the NAVA’s social media accounts. 
 
The following procedures shall apply:

• Use of the NAVA’s social media accounts is subject to the prior written approval from the Executive Director. 
• Once approved, Authorised Users must act in accordance with this Policy for any social media activity of the Authorised User on the organisation’s social media accounts and will be held accountable for anything published that breaches any of these policies or procedures.
• As a representative of NAVA, Authorised Users’ posts should be consistent with the organisation’s profile and be respectful of the organisation, the organisation’s stakeholders and other relevant parties and to all people interacted with. 
• Authorised Users should adhere to the Terms of Use of the relevant Social Media platform/website as well as any applicable laws including, but not limited to:
  • Privacy, confidentiality and information security: conversations or information that is deemed confidential or classified or deals with matters that are internal in nature should not be published.
  • Copyright: copyright laws should be respected, and the original author/source of the work should be accurately attributed wherever possible.
  • Bullying, harassment and discrimination: workplace bullying, harassment and discrimination are expressly prohibited. This includes any bullying, threatening, harassing or discriminatory comments, or comments that may be construed to be bullying, threatening, harassing or discriminatory. 
  • Defamation: any material that may cause injury to or denigrate another person’s, organisation’s, association’s or company’s reputation should not be published. If any material is possibly within those categories, then the issues should be discussed with the Executive Director before publication of such material is considered.
  • Offensive or obscene material: material that is offensive or obscene must not be posted and may infringe relevant online classification laws if it is pornographic, sexually suggestive, harassing, hateful, racist, sexist, abusive or discriminatory.
• Authorised Users must not disclose any confidential information, proprietary or trade secrets or endorsements. If in doubt about whether something is confidential or has not been released publicly, confirmation should be sought from the Executive Director. Company logos, trademarks and intellectual property may not be used without express authority. Authorised Users must ensure that the information can be legally divulged before posting it.
• Authorised Users must keep records of interactions in the online social media space as online statements can be held to the same legal standards as traditional media communications.
• Authorised Users are personally responsible for their words or actions and must ensure that posts are completely accurate, not misleading and do not disclose confidential information or are otherwise unlawful. If in doubt, Authorised Users should not post the information until it is discussed with the Executive Director.
• Authorised users should always credit any images of work by artists or photographers posted publicly. When attributing a work to an artist it is best practice to use the full credit including the artist’s name, the title of the work and the year the work was created. If using an image of the work the photographer should also be acknowledged. For example: Artist name, title of work, year. Photo: photographer name. Where the image is taken in context of an exhibition or other, that should also be acknowledged. Example image credit format: Studio A artist, Emily Crockford working on her Oysters Eating Rainbows mural in the Karingal underpass, Kingsgrove NSW as part of Canal to Creek: WestConnex New M5 public art program, curated by Cultural Capital. Photo by Document Photography 2020. 
• Authorised users should always provide alt text for any images posted. 

Social Media sites, tools, applications and platforms often give rise to public comment and expose contentious issues that have the potential to escalate rapidly, particularly in comments and responses.  Authorised Users must frequently monitor sentiment on those accounts, particularly in the lead-up to and during large-scale events and take active steps to ensure that the relevant social media account conforms with this policy.

Any offensive, potentially defamatory, bullying or other unacceptable comments posted on NAVA social media accounts must be immediately recorded, removed and reported to the Executive Director and/or Advocacy Director.

In all dealings with people Authorised Users are expected to be courteous, patient and helpful. In particular they should aim to communicate effectively and efficiently and where necessary ascertain the particular staff member that can best help the enquirer as quickly as possible.

While representing NAVA as a staff member, employees have a duty of care in relation to any advice or information which may be acted upon by the person advised, particularly if that person could lose financially as a result of acting on such advice. In some circumstances NAVA may be financially liable for losses sustained by people who act on employees' incorrect advice.

To minimise this risk, employees are advised to qualify all statements of advice with reference to the most appropriate people/organisations who are best placed to advise, e.g. legal issues should be referred to the person’s lawyer or the Arts Law Centre of Australia, copyright issues to the Copyright Agency or the Australian Copyright Council, taxation issues to an accountant or the Australian Taxation Office etc.

When a customer contacts NAVA employees via social media, and they are in doubt about the answer you are to provide, refer the matter to your line manager, or direct their enquiry to nava@visualarts.net.au.

When coming across misinformation, news leaks, confidential information, or other questionable content regarding the company on social media, employees should alert the Executive Director and Advocacy Director immediately. Employees must not engage with the content on behalf of NAVA.

Authorised Users must ensure that they do not infringe others’ intellectual property including copyrights and moral rights when using NAVA’s social media.When posting an image or text to NAVA’s social media:

• Permission must be sought from the copyright holder(s) and a fee paid.
• The image or text must be credited appropriately as follows: Artist name, title of work, year. Photo: photographer name; or in the format requested by the copyright holder(s).
• The image or text must not be edited or altered in any way without permission from the copyright holder(s).
• Statements should be quoted correctly and sources credited.

NAVA respects the individual opinions of staff and board members, and their right to express those opinions in public and on social media. NAVA asks staff and board members to be conscious of the possible consequences for NAVA of statements or posts about matters of significance to NAVA.

Employees must have any public statements that are to be made on behalf of NAVA approved in writing by the Executive Director and Advocacy Director before they become public. 

NAVA staff and board members are encouraged to share NAVA content and updates.

• NAVA employees may include organisation information in their social media biographies.
• NAVA employees should recognise that what they write is their responsibility and that they are legally liable for anything they write or present online. Employees can be disciplined by the organisation for commentary, content or images that are defamatory, pornographic, proprietary, harassing, bullying, threatening, discriminatory, libellous or that can create a hostile work environment. Employees will be held accountable for anything they publish that breaches organisation policies and procedures.
• Any individual can have legal procedures taken against them for making statements about someone that are defamatory or slanderous. NAVA cautions employees to be aware of the need to carefully consider and/or edit any statements made so that they cannot be considered such.
• NAVA employees should be polite and respectful to all people they interact with and adhere to the Terms of Use of the relevant Social Media platform/website, as well as copyright, privacy, defamation, contempt of court, discrimination, harassment and other applicable laws.
• NAVA employees must not disclose any confidential information, proprietary or trade secrets under any circumstances and NAVA logos and trademarks may not be used without explicit authority.
• During a PR crisis, NAVA employees must not make comments or statements from your personal social media on behalf of NAVA. Protocols as directed by the Executive Director must be followed.
• NAVA employees should follow the copyright procedures outlined in this policy when posting the intellectual property of others.
• When using personal social media accounts to comment about NAVA or its activities on social media, staff and contractors must:
  • identify their relationship to NAVA as a staff member or contractor;
  • not imply they are authorised to speak as a representative of NAVA, nor give the impression that their views are shared by NAVA;
  • be responsible and protect their reputation and the reputation of NAVA;
  • respect confidentiality and not disclose any confidential information obtained in the course of their employment; and
  • be mindful that information posted online is public and permanent.

Information that you disclose publicly

NAVA suggests that employees use their discretion and exercise caution when providing personal information. For instance, if an employee “shares” information that is posted on the NAVA website using a social media tool, it is likely that they will be sharing their personal information. NAVA cannot protect personal information that employees choose to share in this way.

Ultimately, individuals are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any personal information. 

Protection of your personal information
NAVA will take all reasonable and feasible steps to ensure that employee personal information is properly protected from misuse or loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. Individual staff or board members should not be linked or promoted on social media, either by NAVA or by other staff or board members in posts connected with NAVA, without consent being obtained.

We encourage employees to be vigilant about the protection of their own personal information when using third party digital services (such as social media platforms). As far as reasonably practicable, NAVA will make sure that relationships with those third parties include appropriate protection of your privacy.

Any NAVA employee found to be in breach of this Policy may be subject to appropriate disciplinary action, or, depending on the severity and nature of the breach, termination of employment. Where a breach of this policy constitutes a breach of law, then action may be taken by the organisation in accordance with that law.

If an employee is facing online trolling, harassment or bullying, they may request avenues for redress and/or the provision of support under the following procedures:

• The employee should first discuss the situation with the Executive Director or Advocacy Director.
• In the case of online trolling, NAVA asserts it is always best to ignore anyone whose only aim is to get an irritated response – why debase the online discussion further.
• The Executive Director or Advocacy Director may advise that the employee block the accounts of the people involved in the harassment. These accounts may also be blocked on NAVA’s social media accounts.
• If appropriate the Executive Director or Advocacy Director may assist the employee with reporting the harassment to the police.

Questions about this Policy, should be directed to Leya Reid, Advocacy and Communications Manager leya@visualarts.net.au