Watch what you’re tweeting

By Miranda Yeo, Dawn Puah

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: NICHOLAS YEO

It was already the fifth day of course registration and while most of her peers had secured their desired modules, first-year Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI) student Jane Emmanuella was still six academic units short.

Frustrated, the 20-year-old took to social media platform Twitter earlier this year to vent her irritation at NTU.

To her surprise, she received an email the next day, 12 Jan, from her school’s undergraduate office with a screenshot of her tweet, asking if she needed assistance.

Copied in the email were the school’s associate chair and assistant chair of undergraduate studies.

It read: “We noted that you are distressed over course registration as you had tweeted your frustration and we were alerted to this.”

Emmanuella said: “I was so scared that, because my professors were copied in the email, they would have bad impressions of me, so I’ve since locked my account.

“I wasn’t aware that the school monitored tweets and did not expect my tweets to be seen by my lecturers,” she added.

Monitoring social media feedback is standard practice for many organisations, said Associate Professor Kwok Kian Woon, Associate Provost (Student Life).

“When students tag or mention NTU in their public tweets about specific concerns, the relevant university departments will make it a point to try and assist these students,” he added.

The university did not respond to queries about when this practice started, but Emmanuella is not the only student whose tweets had been picked up by NTU.

Another 21-year-old student, who declined to be named, had a similar experience.

A series of her tweets — one of which described NTU as a “lousy ass school” — was captured in a screenshot and sent back to her in an email, which asked how the school could render her assistance.

Her professors were also copied in the email.

“The screenshot they sent in the email showed a part of my timeline with tweets other than the ones with ‘NTU’ in it. I thought that was unnecessary,” the student said.

Like Emmanuella, the student was worried the email would portray her in a negative light.

The illusion of privacy

While Emmanuella said she appreciated the school’s good inten- tions, she was concerned that her personal social media account was being watched.

“The school did not have to copy my professors in the email if they had just wanted to assist me in course registration,” she added.

“It honestly was a little invasive because it feels like I can’t rant about the university without feeling watched.”

Dr Mark Cenite, who teaches a course in media law, said that as long as the default setting for tweets is public, there are no privacy issues in monitoring and responding to them.

The Associate Chair (Academic) of WKWSCI added: “In the field of corporate communication, that’s considered best practice, and has been for a decade.”

WKWSCI Associate Professor Benjamin Detenber also said students should be aware that anything posted on social media, whether public or private, has the potential to be seen by others.

“Any notion of privacy on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etcetera, is illusory,” he added.

Students weigh in

Most students the Chronicle spoke to were unaware that the school had such a practice and were divided on how they felt about it.

Chloe Neo, 19, a first-year student from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), said students with public accounts should be aware that strangers might be reading their tweets.

“It’s their own fault their professors were alerted to their tweets,” she added.

Others, however, felt that while the school had every right to monitor students’ tweets, contacting them about the tweets was crossing the line.

Final-year student Natalie Huam, 22, felt that while it is the school’s prerogative to monitor online comments related to NTU, contacting students about them is an intrusion of privacy.

“These comments are personal opinions which rightfully belong to the students. Singling the students out for that reason seems unfair and might be humiliating,” the WKWSCI student said.

“A face-to-face meeting between the school dean and the student would be a more sincere and fruitful way of understanding the situation,” Huam added.

Other students also said professors should be kept out of the loop. “It’s okay to contact the student directly but sending the tweets to the professors is like public shaming, which I think is unacceptable,” said Chan Wan Ting, 23, a final-year linguistics student from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).

Low Hui Lee, 20, said that the school should make their practice of monitoring social media known to students.

“If students know the school is watching, they’ll be more responsible with what they say,” added the first-year HSS student.

Assoc Prof Kwok encouraged students to go beyond rants by approaching relevant departments with questions and solutions and exercising personal responsibility on social media.

He raised several examples where supposedly private online posts became public, causing problems for their respective authors.

“Instead of airing dissatisfaction on social media, try looking for a win-win situation by speaking to your professor or school counselor about your concerns,” he said.

“Part of university education is learning to articulate issues and find solutions, and employers would also prefer hiring someone like that over a frequent complainant with no workable solutions,” Prof Kwok added.

NOTABLE SOCIAL MEDIA FAUX PAS IN THE PAST YEAR

1. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s wife, Madam Ho Ching, posted a photo of a monkey displaying a rude hand gesture on her Facebook account on 10 Apr. The post was widely assumed to be directed at Mr Lee’s sister, Dr Lee Wei Ling, who had taken issue with how their father Lee Kuan Yew’s first death anniversary was commemorated. Madam Ho made a public apology for the post and said she was a “Twitter newbie” who accidentally reposted the photo on Facebook.

2. Assistant sports editor of The Straits Times, Mr Chia Han Keong, called Dr Lee Wei Ling an “unfunny, un-fun sourpuss” in a Facebook post on 25 Mar, in reference to her response to commemorations of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s first death anniversary. He later removed the post, and said it was “intemperate”. He added that his views had nothing to do with his role as an editor.

3. Television actress Rebecca Lim became the subject of backlash from netizens after she said in an Instagram post on 13 Feb that she was “retiring”. The post turned out to be a publicity stunt for insurance company NTUC Income to encourage young professionals to plan for retirement. A video of her clarifying the situation garnered over 400 comments, which mostly criticised her for using a “bad marketing gimmick” and accusing her of being untrustworthy.

4. A photograph of the body of one of the two workers killed in an SMRT accident on 22 Mar was circulated on social media, after a full-time police national serviceman leaked the image. The photograph, which showed a close up of the deceased’s body lying on the train tracks, was also circulated on forums and messaging app WhatsApp. The national serviceman in question is being investigated under the Official Secrets Act.