A University in Washington State Needed to Turn Over All of Their Facebook and X DMs—Here’s How They Did It
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50,000+Products:
Social media plays a critical role in the communications strategy for a large public university in Washington state. Jacob Kelly, the university’s assistant director of social media strategy, oversees the seven accounts directly operated by the university. Elise Perachio, the university’s director of digital engagement, managed Kelly before taking over email marketing in 2023.
Over the past decade, the tone of discourse on the university’s social media pages has undergone a dramatic shift, from collegial to at times hostile. But the university is held to First Amendment standards, according to Kelly, which limits the degree to which they can moderate discussions on social media. Deleting or hiding content puts them at risk— particularly if they receive a records request for social media content.
The Challenge: Navigating Public Records Compliance in a Changing Digital Landscape
When Perachio began her tenure in 2007, conversations on the university’s social media pages were relatively tame. It remained this way for years. In fact, when Kelly started at the university in 2017, Perachio told him that most conversations on their pages were civil and insightful.
But that quickly began to change in the months following the 2016 election. Comment sections became increasingly testy. For example, Perachio’s team published several Pride Month posts to the university’s pages only to receive a string of anti-LGBTQ comments.
We said ‘OK, we don’t want to just freestyle how we handle these comments. We need real guidance, and we also knew that we needed some way to capture this stuff.
Elise Perachio
Director of Digital Engagement
Around the same time, the university hired a new leader to oversee Perachio’s team. He had previous experience working in government communications and managing public records requests. So, he understood the risk the marketing and communications team faced if they received a request for content that had previously been deleted. With a desire to be able to do some form of social media moderation in mind while remaining compliant with public record laws, Perachio’s team began to explore vendors capable of preserving social media content. They soon found Social Media Archiving.
The Solution: Finding, Filtering, and Exporting Social Media Content with Ease
Although Perachio and her team met with another vendor in the social media content preservation space, she quickly realized Social Media Archiving best fit the needs of her team. Some of the features that are paying off for her and Kelly today include:
- Range of Archivable Content: Social Media Archiving not only preserves posts and comments, but also direct messages, images, blocked lists, and other social media content that can be included in a public records request.
- Filter and Searching: Perachio and Kelly can easily find the content they need whenever it’s requested by filtering for date, content type, and account, and by searching using keywords.
- Simple Exporting: Once they have selected the social media content they need from their archive, Perachio and Kelly can export it as a HTML, PDF, or CSV file.
“[After exporting the content] there was a big zipped file at the end of it. I was able to just ship that over to the Records Management, which facilitates communications the requester,” says Perachio.
Results: Thousands of Records Archived and Simplified Request Fulfillment
Overall, the university archives nearly 3,700 pieces of content every month across their seven accounts. Most importantly, Perachio and Kelly have needed to use Social Media Archiving to fulfill public records requests.
Shortly after signing on as a Social Media Archiving customer in 2018, Perachio and Kelly received a request from The Chronicle of Higher Education seeking every direct message sent from the university’s X and Facebook accounts over the previous year. While many of her colleagues at other colleges and universities struggled with similar requests, she was ready.
“I was in the fortunate position of just being able to grab it,” says Perachio.
Conclusion: Peace of Mind in an Era of Increasing Scrutiny
For Perachio and Kelly, Social Media Archiving is a form of “insurance” in a world where public records requests are becoming increasingly common—and complex.
“I think of [Social Media Archiving] as a ‘have to have’, especially as a state institution,” says Kelly.