Our Shared Future: Social Media, Leadership, Vulnerability, and Digital Identity

Social media have not been merely fads for quite some time. College students first used Facebook in 2004. While its beginning was not ground zero for social media, Facebook has often dominated the conversation about this phenomenon. In the beginning, Facebook was limited to anyone with an .edu e-mail address. Originating at Harvard University, Facebook made its way to higher education institutions with amazing speed. Eight years later, more than 1 billion people worldwide access Facebook (“Key facts,” 2012).

The site, much like radio and television before it, has become part of our cultural landscape. Joining Facebook atop an ever-growing collection of social media sites are Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, WordPress, and LinkedIn. Students, staff, faculty, and seemingly everyone who has access to the web are participating in some form of social media. No longer trendy, or a fad, social media influence our identity and how we make meaning.

Social media have become the topic du jour for many practitioners in higher education. As communications and engagement channels, social media represent a major shift in how we connect and communicate. Broadcast-style missives have been joined by conversational tweets, posts, and updates. The fluidity of sharing and privacy has been exposed, and vulnerability is frequently heralded. As an emerging topic for discussion, digital identity development factors into the day-to-day experiences of today’s college student. And, those in leadership roles have provided a mix of support, promotion, caution, and punditry. Communities are forming through social media interactions, and we need to jump into the conversation.

The Conversation

When Twitter debuted in 2006, it represented a new form of social media. By combining the simplicity of a Facebook-like status update, a 140 character posting restriction, and a more open platform, Twitter reinvented how we engage through digital conversations. As blogs had previously demonstrated via comments, Twitter was dynamically more useful when users started to engage with one another. Eventually, conversations flourished and community was formed.

Initially, as with Facebook, Twitter was all about the individual user experience. It would take a while before big brands and student affairs departments began using various social media channels (including Twitter) for marketing and promotion. Because of this pattern of adoption and use, some themes emerged. Originally labeled by many professionals in higher education as a site solely for students, or “their space,” Facebook was largely ignored by student affairs practitioners as an engagement and communications platform for several years. Then it happened. Conference sessions on how to create a Facebook profile were extremely popular for several years at some of the largest student affairs events. While Facebook has been on student affairs’s social media radar for some time, Twitter has only recently had widespread adoption by practitioners.

Because of the relative newness of these two popular social media platforms, usage was inconsistent. On the one hand, traditional marketing practices from print media were adopted by many in their social media endeavors. Broadcasting event details, policy changes, and other informational bulletins were widespread. It was easy to post outbound updates on Facebook and tweets on Twitter.

On the other hand, engagement and conversation have proven to be challenging for those who work in student affairs. For the most part, this challenge has been due to the lack of inclusion of social media (or strategic communications) within position descriptions/divisional structures. Without a formal process of including social media into work structures, only individuals who had an affinity for the medium were at the forefront of engagement and conversations. Not surprisingly, however, as practitioners responded to students via social media, community and connection were enhanced.

Another challenge has been that the depth of conversation on social media is frequently questioned. One approach to social media conversations is the tip-of-the-iceberg philosophy. An interaction on Twitter, a comment on Facebook, or a response to a blog post can be the start of multiple conversations. As a result, while the large numbers of social media exchanges may seem to lack depth, they frequently contribute to enhanced in-person relationships with students and practitioners. Recently, some administrators have started to include social media responsibilities into their new position openings. With administrators taking cues from big brands, strategy and engagement are on the rise. Social media are simply not digital bulletin boards.

Personal Branding and Performativity

The conversations that take place on social media have pushed some leaders into new online spaces. Adopting new technologies, posting from mobile devices, and learning how to engage have given rise to a new kind of personal (and professional) brand. Social media provide ample opportunities for self-promotion. Necessitated by today’s employment climate and/or the nature of the social web, professionals have adopted the idea of the personal brand with enthusiasm. However, issues relating to work/life balance and the blurring of personal/professional identities (e.g., Facebook’s combination of everything related to one’s life) initially caused many in higher education to “perform” their brand.

The conventional wisdom on personal branding is that it represents everything that we do online. All of our social media posts compile to create our branded identity. Professionally speaking, a personal brand makes sense as many in higher education are using social media to supplement the traditional networking of annual conferences and to enhance professional development opportunities using custom curated personal learning networks.

Proponents of personal branding abound. However, one wonders what we are sacrificing at the expense of having a digital brand. When everyone is posting nearly the same thing on Twitter, Facebook, or their blog, does it become a giant ego trip? Promoters of a positive-posts-only, online brand may be appealing at first, but what about those times when we need to mix it up and live in the gray? Life is messy. Professionals learn much from observing other professionals. Performing an online brand pushes us further away from our authentic selves. Social media conversations matter when they are honest. What happens when professionals start playing a part?

The strain of maintaining the false dichotomy that is work/life balance must be addressed as it relates to social media and personal branding. Social media have muddled the long-held assumption that successful professionals have achieved a mythical blend of work/life balance. The only social media site that is still focused solely on professional engagement is LinkedIn. All of the other sites combine our entire lives into a single profile. It is not that social media are the cause of new ways of being; they are merely portals that expose behavior, action, and patterns. The way that we engage, share, learn, and lead is constantly evolving. Thanks to social media, we are learning that leading requires a certain amount of vulnerability.

Leadership and Vulnerability

When administrators share their triumphs and challenges on social media, they are “practicing vulnerability” (Stoller, 2012) Social media have created new communications spaces for leaders. Today’s senior student affairs officers (SSAO) are engaging in leadership on their campus and in online spheres. Historically, leaders in student affairs have taken communications cues from campus culture, their individual strengths and styles, and from professional standards documents (e.g., Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education). The rise of social media as strategic communications and engagement vehicles for senior leaders has spurred many in the field to create work-focused accounts on services like Twitter and Facebook. Popular deans of students, vice presidents, and practitioners of all levels have demonstrated the power of social media connections.

The accounts that seem to generate the most interactions are those that engage in conversation with students, staff, faculty, parents, families, and community members. While this heightened level of interaction may at first appear like much extra work, the rewards and returns on community are appreciable. An hour spent hosting a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session by an SSAO may seem silly to some, but the opportunity to connect with a large number of students is an important consideration.

The early adopters of social media have a slight advantage when it comes to how they use the buffet of online social tools. There is a learning curve that requires that which is most precious to administrators of all levels of responsibility and expertise — time. Ironically, a certain level of vulnerability must be practiced in order to get past the initial lack of understanding of the breadth and depth of each social media site. Leadership concepts and ideas are at their best when evaluation is part of the process. Choosing among the social media tools takes time, understanding, and evaluation. Our initial hesitancy to engage with students on social media sites like Facebook has been replaced with a sense of urgency. Practitioners have long been leaders on campus; it is time for a leap that focuses on student development in digital spheres.

Digital identity matters to professionals and students. Privacy has become much more fluid due to social media sharing. What would have been unheard of for previous generations has become our new normal. Frequent conversations about social media and privacy generally involve someone stating that “age matters.” While an individual’s age is always going to be part of their salient identities, what seems to occur with social media is a fluid level of preference. Sharing is individualistic and can be consistent as well as inconsistent. In a world that wants us to be professional or personal (and not both simultaneously), sharing can cause dissonance. Early SSAO adopters of social media have understood this phenomenon and have adopted their own style of social media use. There is not a one-size-fits-all social media paradigm. Social media require an appreciation for art and science — the art of communication and the science of measurement and assessment.

Digital Identity Matters

Similar to the challenges presented by personal branding, digital identity development is relatively new to the student affairs social media conversation (Stoller, 2012). In the eight years that Facebook has existed, we have adapted to an entirely new way of representing ourselves online. In the early days of the web, most people did not have an online persona that mirrored their in-real-life (IRL) selves. Anonymity ruled. Sure, the occasional bloggers would get themselves into trouble every once in a while, but most people were not concerned with their digital identity.

Our online selves were mostly separate from what we did in the brick-and-mortar sphere. And then, Facebook came along (and later on, LinkedIn debuted) and changed how we interact with the Internet. Facebook and LinkedIn were not based in anonymous web interactions. Friends and family on Facebook “friended” one another, and professionals connected on LinkedIn. Users were encouraged or even required to use their real name. Digital identity had arrived.

Because Facebook opened its doors in 2006 to anyone who was 13 years old, many of today’s college students have used this medium for several years. Growing up with Facebook is markedly different than joining the site as a professional. Teenagers sharing teenage behaviors online represent a digital representation of maturation, learning, and experience. It is messy. When Facebook introduced “Timeline” in 2011, the raw unpolished postings of yesterday were accessible to almost anyone who could access someone’s profile. It was as if an unvetted digital scrapbook had been released without communal permission.

Digital identity is evolving. Students are posting practically everything about themselves online. From Tumblr to Instagram, individuals are sharing more then ever before. Within student affairs, a reactive tendency regarding social media and digital identity has emerged. Administrators, overworked and tasked to do more with less, have had to police social media after finding information about a problematic incident. It is extremely easy for students to post something on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram without truly giving it much thought. Critical thinking is at the core of the collegiate experience. Teaching students the importance of taking a pause before posting and that their content may someday be “Googled” needs to be a consistent campus learning outcome.

Because of a professional investment in engagement and learning, student affairs is well situated to become the leading voice for digital identity development in higher education. From the first day that a student interacts with a school, online development education begins. A balanced approach that emphasizes community building, online ethics, and encouragement is needed. At new student orientation, sessions should be given on what it means to be a member of a new community. Career services personnel should start conversations both in-person and through social media with new students. Getting students acquainted with LinkedIn during their first year of school would give them a chance for heightened fluency and wisdom when they are nearing graduation and searching for a future career. Student conduct offices should become ambassadors for social media and community building by way of modeling best practices, civility, and nuance about social media so that the entire campus is involved in a dialogue that blends face-to-face with web-based interactions.

Moving Beyond Judgment

Perhaps we are socialized to judge one another. Social media have a tendency to amplify the exposure of the good, the bad, and the ugly of human behaviors. When a student posts something online without thinking of the potential ramifications, it is up to restorative-based practitioners to step in and work with students. Let us move beyond a cat-and-mouse game, where students try to hide their activities from administrators, and professionals bring the hammer down on students.

As technology continues to provide pathways for employment, learning, and relationships, it is vital that student affairs practitioners focus on their own fluency with social media. Not understanding something that students are using places administrators in a reactive position. We need to learn, model, and lead when it comes to social media activities. Being judgmental or punitive seems like an outdated way of being. The ideals at most institutions — civility, engagement, learning, and a sense of togetherness — have spread quite nicely to the social media sphere. Our professional standards and functional areas are evolving far slower than the advancements on the web. We may have to move faster than we have been accustomed in order to achieve consistent practices and strategies.

Recommendations

In some ways, student affairs is a radical profession. We build community, provide leadership and engagement opportunities, and focus our energies on student success. Social media have challenged the profession. Evolution in higher education is not known for its speed. Our graduate preparation programs are holding on to core curricula in the midst of tremendous change. Online-only students, nontraditional, international, and those who have been erroneously labeled as digital natives require us to adopt, adapt, and aspire to new heights. Thankfully, social media provide conduits for connection, information dissemination, and conversation on a scale that far exceeds our bulletin boards and traditional communications channels. Social media have provided us with a new form of interaction that blends into our IRL spaces — in fact, IRL now includes the online community. ■

[Originally written in 2012]

References
Facebook. (2012). Key facts — Facebook newsroom. Retrieved from http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts

Stoller, E. (2012a, April 4). Practicing vulnerability: Are we wholehearted? Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/student-affairs-and-technology/practicing-vulnerability-are-we-wholehearted

Stoller, E. (2012b, September 12). Digital identity development. Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/student-affairs-and-technology/digital-identity-development