Digital Governance
Digital Governance
ON THIS PAGE you will find two digital governance case studies.
This scenario might be different to your organisation or context, but are based on our research with sexual and reproductive health practitioners and offer insight into what digital governance can look like in practice.
What’s the problem?
The Sexual Health Organisation (SHO) has recently decided to create a TikTok account for health promotion and community outreach.
Communication and health promotion staff raise concerns that their current social media policies are either out of date or not well understood by leadership across the organisation. For example, the current social media content approval process takes over a week.
The health promotion and communication teams report that existing social media content is missing current trends and not successful in reaching intended audiences. This results in wasted time and resources.
What’s the solution?
The organisational manager and communication lead use the Digital Capabilities model and Checklist to develop a plan for auditing, benchmarking and revising existing social media policies.
“If you’re on platforms like TikTok [and] you miss the boat, then it comes out cringey and you’d be better off not posting it. So, I think that being able to be responsive and having an organisational culture to prioritise this sort of work would be really beneficial.”
(Health promotion professional, 18-29, DDCSRH).
What’s the problem?
Cat, a health promotion officer, manages Sexual Health Organisation (SHO)’s social media presence. The organisation has decided to commemorate the Trans Day of Remembrance with an Instagram post explaining why trans rights matter for sexual health.
The post is screen-captured and shared by a far-right podcaster, with a derogatory caption. Her followers shared her post across online communities internationally, who then spammed SHO’s Instagram account with transphobic comments, including death threats and gendered harassment. The messages begin after midnight (Australian time) and quickly spread to SHO’s other social media accounts
Cat wakes up to a panicked email from her CEO, who had just received calls from the local media. Cat has no training in social media management, and SHO’s social media policy does not offer guidance on responding to a 24/7 sustained social media pile-on.
After 24 hours of attempting to delete the individual comments on SHO’s social posts, Cat is feeling sick and overwhelmed. She is concerned that these transphobic comments are creating an unsafe environment for SHO’s followers and staff.
What’s the solution?
Finally, Cat changes SHO’s privacy settings so that only existing followers can reply to SHO’s post. She cautiously changes the privacy settings back after a week without the pile-on restarting. Her managers realise that the current SHO digital governance policies are not fit for purpose.
After ensuring that Cat has adequate personal support, SHO leadership resolves to seek expert advice on social media management, and ensure staff receive adequate training in future.
“[There is a need for] some sort of safeguard for the clients, but also a safeguard for the staff. So, there’s a policy around what is best practice, and acceptable practice, in that organisation. Then having the supporting procedures and resources to then implement it properly…”
(Public Health Researcher DDCSRH)
