This is our discussion about twitter best practices.
On the one hand, engagement is essential. On the other hand, the reputation of Twitter as an appropriate platform for engagement seems to be in flux. I think this topic may need to be revised as a generic social media style guide. Collective Services Mission will draft that in coming weeks as this forum is “wifi-fied”.
We could definitely use a social media style guide, but also an overall strategy.
Style and Strategy issues:
Who shall post - certain assigned persons posting “as OpenAir”?, any member when they can?
Where shall they post - is any publicity better than none? go for broad-as possible engagement? Are there places we don’t want to be seen (such as Twitter, possibly? or generally engaging with climate-denial trolls?) shall they post publicly or only to receptive channels?
When shall they post - daily, weekly? depending on current events? Can we over-message and create listener-fatigue?
What shall they post - approved or style-checked content? any relevant links? Can we damage credibility by some members posting conflicting analyses or “junk”
I could post this into Discord and have group discussion, I suppose. I do not know what are “right” answers to any of these questions. In my personal opinion, OA should have some individuals who are charged with regular posting under an OA presence in major media: FB, Instagram, Twit, Reddit, and now Mastodon are some conspicuous outlets. Various other channels maybe. They, or members of their team should develop those posts from consistent style every week or a little less. They should be relatively non-technical; no acronyms. They need guidelines for fielding responses - which give rise to recruitment, but also give rise to troll-wars at times. I think if we agree collectively on WHERE we will post, developing the scheme for what to post and when will be much more obvious.
Personally, I will not visit FB or Instagram due to Zuckerberg (abusive business model) owning them, nor Twitter now (due to loss of moderation, at least). But nothing is perfect I guess. Volunteers who take on these posting roles have to be willing to access the media sites where OA will have presence, of course. I don’t know how easy it is to differentiate one’s personal FB presence from one’s OA presence on a single computer - being counter to FB’s desire to track individual behavior. Could be challenging. I’d approach it by using a different devoted browser for my “I-am-OA” activity, I think.
Right now, the bulk of our content on Twitter comes from Toby Bryce, but Chris and I post occasionally. I feel like this part of the discussion is probably better for the Discord twitter channel.
OpenAir did not ever have a Facebook account, largely due to my objections. We did have a Instagram account (and might again at some point), but at the moment it’s deac†ivated (they are saying it’s permanent), because they claim we violated their community guidelines, though they never told us how and we can’t seem to get anyone to talk to us. We’re working on it, but it might be gone for good.