Journal

Posted by: Nick Vitale

08 August 2012

Football Association Clarifies Twitter Rules For Players

Football clubs were hoping that the Football Association intended to visit and deliver a set of rules on the usage of social media, specifically Twitter, before the start of the season. Unfortunately, when the FA visited the clubs they had no significant set of rules for the clubs but they did deliver a few key points.

The FA advised clubs and players of the following:

  • Players are allowed to “banter” with other players
  • Players risk being charged for tweeting about someone’s race, faith, disability or sexual orientation
  • One 70 day suspension was already delivered for an offensive tweet
  • Players are responsible for their accounts “so no blame could be transferred to agents if the site was run for them.”
  • If a player did make such a tweet the quick fix is to delete the tweet and apologise immediately
  • The FA stated that retweets are also considered an “endorsement”

We recently read an article where the author stated, “Twitter is like a personal press conference for the public.” (We’re paraphrasing here.) Currently, the FA doesn’t have a set of standards or a policy like most public-facing businesses do for dealing with communications through social media. With the right policy for employer-to-public mediums, like Twitter, staff, players and everyone else would have a set of clear-cut rules and this would alleviate some of the deliberation around the issue.

Most businesses are starting to recognise that social media, specifically social media like Twitter, can be difficult for a company when they don’t have a set of checks in place to ensure staff know what, how and when they may share things. There’s no question that all businesses and organisations will, ultimately, create a set of standards for their staff and representatives for sharing any type of information via social media or other public facing communication platforms.

If your business or organisation needs guidance or support in dealing with social media and the associated planning get in touch and be proactive in planning for social networks. Email us directly at hello@studioskylab.com or on Twitter @studioskylab.

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