Another charity has decided to leave social media platform X.
The Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (Nicva) states it did so for the safety of its staff and cited privacy concerns. The following post below was written by Jonny Currie, Director of Policy and Insight on their website here and copied below:
An update on NICVA’s recent decision to stop posting on X, and a summary of a recent webinar exploring VCS social media engagement during a time of fragmentation and misinformation.
Last month NICVA decided to stop posting on the social media platform X.
Every charity needs to consider its own choices for social media engagement and how any changes may impact its audiences, staff and volunteers. However as the umbrella body for the voluntary and community sector in Northern Ireland, we believe it’s important that we communicate the development of our own thinking on this issue.
We considered factors such as: personal wellbeing and safety of staff, the size and profile of our audience, the level of active engagement with our content, the presence of peers and decision-makers, changes in content moderation, and privacy concerns.
After careful review, being mindful of the positive role social media can play for the people and communities supported by our sector, we believe that the increasingly divisive nature of X, along with an increase in the promotion of false, negative and hateful messaging, does not align with our values of courage, collaboration, caring and commitment to excellence.
NICVA has a broad social media presence across multiple platforms that enable us to communicate our messages to different audiences and this decision presents an opportunity for us to define the best way to engage with our audiences as social media platforms continue to change over time.
While we are choosing to focus on other, safer social media channels – we will continue to monitor these in light of our values. These channels are currently Facebook
, Linkedin, and we have recently joined Bluesky
.
NICVA is also developing a new social media strategy that will consider the following key questions:
Where is our target audience most active?
Which platforms align with our mission and values?
Where can our content thrive, without compromising user safety?
This evolving challenge is shared by our wider sector, as demonstrated last week when over sixty people from across the the VCS attended our webinar entitled “Navigating Social Media in a Post-Truth world.”
Adeela Warley, CEO of Charity Comms
– the membership network for communications professionals working in UK charities, set the scene with some framing questions and shared practical templates, checklists,and wider resources.
Madeleine Sugden is a digital impact consultant who supports charities improve their digital skills, strategies, processes and output. Madeleine demonstrated the fall in meaningful engagement with content from charities on X – especially since the acquisition of the channel by Elon Musk in 2022, and explained the opportunities offered by Bluesky as an alternative platform.
Madeleine also outlined top tips for building presence on Bluesky, and shared insights on how to choose the right social media channels for your charity. There was also a welcome reminder to try and make social media fun again!
Dr Orna Young from FactCheck NI framed the challenge of social media engagement within the context of wider misinformation trends – with an encouragement to take control of what we can to ensure our sector’s expertise and critical voice is still heard amidst these shifting sands.
Finally, Sam Nelson from Children’s Law Centre shared an important VCS organisation’s perspective. Despite examples where their services benefitted from social media, their rationale for stepping away from X was clearly informed by the impact of negative algorithms on the fears of young people, and need to continually assess digital platforms.
We are all on a journey with our social media channels. As a sector, we must continue to help each other in our work with insights, messages, information and actions that allow us to use social media in the most effective ways, and counter online hate and misinformation. NICVA will continue to share our own learning as we develop our new social media strategy.