Social Media for Storytelling

Contents

When you think of digital storytelling, social media might be the first communication tool that comes to mind. It is a valuable communication tool, and social media platforms can be great homes for your storytelling content, but you should be careful about how and when you use it.

General Best Practices

Should I use social media?

Social media can be a good avenue for communication when your organization consistently has new updates on work, research, and activities for a broad audience.

It might not be the right avenue for an organization that doesn’t need a broader public audience (for instance, a group looking to primarily address their own community or their local government), or for an organization that doesn’t have consistent updates to share with its broader public audience.

What kind of social media should I use?

Each social media platform has its own special features, allowing you to do share different kinds of content in different ways. You don’t need to use every social media platform; don’t bite off more than you can chew. Posting will always take more effort than you think, and it isn’t so simple as reposting the same video on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Each app has its own stipulations.

Questions to ask yourself:

What is my group’s social media capacity? How much time can we realistically spend creating and publishing content for social media, considering our capacity and the other work we do?
Which platforms (refer to the descriptions below) would serve my group best? Which apps have the features we want and are most likely to help us reach our target audience?

What are the risks of using social media for storytelling?

Sudden Attention Moments

Sometimes, social media algorithms facilitate bursts or sudden attention on an individual person, social media account, or post. This is sometimes called “going viral.”

In the EJ/CJ world, a sudden attention moment or “going viral” can lead to negative attention from climate change-denying groups and personalities.

While it is not likely that posting EJ/CJ storytelling content will incur a sudden attention moment, it is possible, and it is important for storytellers to be aware of this risk.

What to do in the case of a sudden attention moment:

LEAN IN: One option is to lean into the attention and virality. You can capitalize on the extra attention on your group and community and continue posting, further spreading your online messaging.
LEAN OUT: The other option is “go dark.” You should post nothing until some other post in the space goes viral or receives sudden attention from the algorithm. Go private, block bad actors, change your password—blackout. If you are a small organization, it is unlikely that you will be the target of a digital attack, but if you are a bigger organization take steps to secure your account and establish the truth about your organization and community:
- Release a statement regarding the sudden attention
- Publish a list of FAQs (frequently asked questions) and their answers to ensure visitors to your social media are seeing accurate information about your group and community

Both options have their benefits and drawbacks. It is important to consider the safety of your organization and community members before leaning into any sudden attention!

Dealing with Trolls

More common than going viral is the attention of an internet troll on your post. In EJ/CJ online storytelling, this might look like a few cruel comments about the appearance of the storyteller featured in a recent post, or a hateful comment about the story they are sharing.

In certain cases, internet trolls can pose a safety risk if individuals are targeted. An individual might be doxxed—their private information, like an address, might be leaked online. For more on cybersecurity, see the National Council of Nonprofits’ Cybersecurity for Nonprofits resource.

When you post online, you should prepare yourself for the possibility that people may be hateful online. But it is still important to tell your story.

No matter how familiar you are with the internet, it is important to protect yourself from online cruelty:

Have someone else read the comments on your post
Avoid interacting with trolls online
Protect your privacy
Remind yourself why you are sharing this story, and remember that a few mean comments won’t stop you from reaching that goal

When the story isn’t yours anymore

Once a story is released into the world, unpredictable internet algorithms will carry and spread it. And once a story is out there, you cannot take it back. Whatever is on the internet is permanent.

While it is possible to guide a story to the audiences you want to see it, you cannot control an audience’s reactions, or that the story might reach the wrong people.

This is an important thing to consider when telling a story—once you tell it, you can’t take it back. Sometimes, that means a story shouldn’t be told, or at least it shouldn’t be told publicly on the internet. Maybe a private, in-person audience or library archive is a better home for your story.

Digital Safety

Online storytelling is so powerful because of its wide reach. But wide reach also has risks associated with it. When you share your story on the internet, you share it with everybody on the internet, including bad actors, like the internet trolls discussed in the last section. There are steps you can take to protect the story, the storyteller, and your organization to ensure your digital safety and cybersecurity.

Pre-Flight Checklist

Before you start storytelling online, make sure you can check the following boxes:

Cybersecurity

Do you have strong passwords?
Are you using a password vault or password manager?

Preventing and Dealing with Harassment

Have a pre-written statement ready about your organization’s mission and the work it does. This could look like an FAQ document, a set of talking points, or another readily available statement that staff can use to quickly correct any misinformation circulating online.
Conduct a bi-weekly scan. Every two weeks, or whenever staff are able depending on capacity, search your organization’s name on Google and all social media platforms to ensure you are not getting negative attention. To make this process easier, you can set a Google Alert for your organization’s name. This will send you, or a designated staff member, emails when new results for your organization show up in Google Search.
Throughout the informed consent process, make sure your storytellers are aware of the risks of online storytelling, especially if the storyteller is not a part of your organization. Return to the “Choosing Your Audience: Who and How” post to learn more about informed consent.
Keep storytellers anonymous (e.g. by using a pseudonym), if their identity puts them at risk.
Even when a storyteller’s identity doesn’t necessarily put them at risk, don’t use their full name if you don’t have to, and don’t tag their personal social media in your organization’s post. These steps make your storyteller harder to trace. If you are trying to decide whether to share personal information about a storyteller online:
- Think about why you would want this storyteller’s identity to receive individual attention before making it possible to receive it.
- Obtain informed consent from any storytellers who would like to be publicly identifiable. Even if they consent, they should still be aware of the risks and benefits. This could, for example, be a handout shared with storytellers before stories are shared online.

How should I respond to online harassment?

Who is the harassment coming from?

A bot: Don’t respond. If a hate comment is coming from an account with very few followers, no profile picture, and no identifying information, it’s probably a bot. You can delete these comments, just ignore them, or block the account. It is very easy to block an account without the blocked user becoming aware of it, so it can be beneficial to block liberally if you are concerned about malintent from a suspicious user interacting with your page.

A big account: If the commenter is an important account—an influencer, another organization, or someone in your community you want to connect with—direct message (DM) the account with an offer to discuss their comments and reply with a canned response: “We DM’ed you if you’d like to talk more!” Most of the time, they won’t engage privately. But if they do, you can share your pre-drafted FAQs. Don’t spend time engaging on their questions unless they seem genuinely interested in learning more.

A random individual: You don’t have to respond to every comment. You can reply to some individual comments with your canned response and offer to chat privately or respond directly to any questions. But it is important to PRIORITIZE when choosing which comments to engage with—if it is an account with a following, it’s more important to reply.