Paper Example on Social Media Policy for Religious Church: Guidelines for Safe Spaces

Introduction

This social media policy is created to be a living document to redirect the current necessities of a religious church. The following guidelines will be adhered to in the management of user-generated documents submitted to the church followers to facilitate safe spaces for conversation and dialogue within the religious church on the platforms of social media. They will incorporate websites or accounts moderated or managed by the denominational Staff (Dye, 2011). Comments and posts that do not observe the following policies will be considered to conflict with religious church mission and are subject to elimination (United Methodist Church, 2016). The user may be blocked or removed from the religious platform if there will be an occurrence of repeated violations of these policies.

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General Guidelines

Personal attacks and hate speech should be refrained from by the users. This will include but are not limited to attacking or questioning the faith of a particular person or group (The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, 2019). Such kind of posts or comments will be highly prohibited from all social media platforms.

Posts with descriptive acts of violence or threats towards other individuals or groups will not be allowed. In case of misconduct, the post will be recorded by the site administrator after consultation with the organizational leaders. Appropriate authorities will then be contacted about the threatening behavior.

Only family-friendly content will be allowed to be posted on web platforms. Posts that contain contents that are unsuitable for viewing by children are prohibited. This guideline forbids the posting of disturbing images or videos, cursing, any descriptive text that contains obscene materials and posts that comprise URL links to platforms with the subjects, as mentioned above (Ike, 2020).

If anyone would like to form a social media cluster for a particular agency, he or she must acquire consent from the authorities of the religious church (Moberg, 2017). This policy requires a minimum of at least one staff member of the church, and one amateur member is made manager of the created social media contour.

Concerns regarding the religious church policies ought not to be declared publicly on the web platform. Derogatory posts towards the church members should be avoided at all costs.

Social Media Policy for Staff working with Children and Youths

This policy is committed to approaches that work with children and youths. Therefore, as a religious community, we aim to be positive role models in the lives of our children and youths (Gorveatte et al., 2018). It is crucial to know what is posted as well as being intentional on ensuring that clean content is shared among children and youths.

Staff members may accept friend requests from youths or followers if they wish to when they send them requests on web platforms. Parental consent should be sought if the religious ministry creates a group or web platform for communicating with the youths before sending invitations.

Staff ought not to post photos or pictures with the youths or children to their accounts of the social media (AGFinancial, 2017). They should seek permission from parents to use pictures of their children, and if you wish to tag yourself in the pictures, you are permitted to do so (Lewis Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing, 2018).

No one is, by all means, obliged to accept friend requests from youths or followers in the accounts of your social media, and you are discouraged from doing so where it is not in the best interest of the youths or your best interests.

No personal counseling should be provided over the media. Counseling discussions should be moved to an appropriate venue.

References

AGFinancial. (2017, April 21). Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Church. AGFinancial. https://www.agfinancial.org/blog/bid97988creating-a-social-media-policy-for-your-church/.

Dye, E. (2011, August 19). How-To Create a Social Media Policy for Your Church. ChurchMag. https://churchm.ag/social-media-policy/.

Gorveatte, J., Wunderlich, D., Haley, B., Ditmer, B., & McDuffie, E. (2018, May 11). 12 Guidelines for Church Social Media. MinistryTech. https://ministrytech.com/social-media/12-guidelines-church-social-media/.

Ike, D. (2020, January 6). Social Media Policies for Churches. ChurchTechToday. https://churchtechtoday.com/2020/01/15/social-media-policies-for-churches/.

Lewis Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing, B. (2018, September 19). How social media is changing the church. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-social-media-is-changing-the-church-57405.

Moberg, M. (2017, May 25). Bloomsbury Collections at the heart of research. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474283205.

The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. (2019, July 21). Parish Administration. The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. https://www.episcopalct.org/Find-Resources/General-Parish-Operations/Safe-Church-Resources/Guidelines-for-Social-Media/.

United Methodist Church. (2016, February 27). Social Media Guidelines for Clergy & Congregational Leaders the North Georgia Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. Ngumc. https://www.ngumc.org/files/fileslibrary/communications/social+media+guidelines+2016.pdf.