How to harness the power of social media for effective climate crisis management

When a campus climate incident surfaces on campus, the event is often posted, shared, and dissected on multiple social media platforms—almost instantly, a local incident grabs national attention. Misinformation about an incident and misrepresentation of how the institution is responding can spread quickly as unaffiliated individuals contribute to the conversation. Senior enrollment, student affairs, and campus leaders express they feel powerless to control a social media firestorm that can tarnish an institution’s reputation almost overnight.

Despite years of investment, social media monitoring is an enduring challenge for colleges and universities. Most monitoring efforts are reactive, campus initiatives remain siloed across individual departments, and responses are too slow to keep pace with the rapidly moving conversations happening on various platforms.

Progressive institutions recognize the need for continuous and centralized monitoring—also known as social listening. Social listening provides actionable information on critical topics through continuous and sophisticated social media monitoring. Businesses and other organizations—and increasingly higher ed—recognize the potential of social listening for a variety of strategic uses, including crisis management.

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