Over the past week a new trend has spread across facebook in Australia. Facebook “Gossip” accounts have sprung up throughout the site, primarily focussing on different schools. What’s happening is this; students are setting up anonymous facebook accounts under pseudonyms and encouraging students to send in any gossip or lies they can. The owner of the fake account would then publish these rumours under the account for all to see. Pieces of gossip often include faked pregnancies, multiple sexual partners, cheating and the spreading of STD’s.

This craze is no doubt trying to emulate the narrative drive of the popular show “Gossip Girl”, where in the show an anonymous blogger sends out random gossip of the goings on of the main characters of the show for the rest of the high school to follow.

What is a lazy story device for tv writers though is a real problem for Australian teenagers right now. Whether this gossip is fictional or not, these stories have real world consequences.

Schools are right in the firing line. It’s their name being bandied around on these accounts and parents will be looking to them to make it right. Here are five things schools should be doing right now about these accounts.

1. Have clear policies and procedures in place

Luckily for us, these accounts are on facebook, who have clear Terms of Service about vilification and fake accounts. Once these accounts have been reported they are now being very quickly taken down by facebook. In most instances it seems that students themselves are reporting these sites – they now only last a few hours at the most.

What the students need to know is the procedure the school would like them to follow if such a thing occurs. Lots of schools have procedures in place for cyberbullying matters but if they don’t it should look something like this.

a) If the student comes across a “gossip” page on facebook, they need to take a screenshot of the site (done by clicking printscreen on a pc, or command-shift-3 on a mac). This step is vital as once the page has been taken down all the evidence will be taken with it.

A challenging part of the evidence collection is that often students have to “friend” or “like” the page to see what is on it. It’s a clever marketing ploy on the part of these sites – you have to be a member to see the information. Schools need to take an approach that just being affiliated with the account makes you complicit in the harassment it serves.

b) Report the page to facebook. This is done easily by clicking on the “report” link on the account or page, then selecting the “This profile is pretending to be someone or is fake” option. Whilst facebook may have been slow to respond to this in the past they seem to now be quick to follow up on these reports.

c) Report to the school. With evidence in hand, the student should then report the incident to the school. This should be made as easy as possible to the student both at school with a dedicated cybersafety officer and online. Schools should have some way online for students to report cybersafety issues whether through a dedicated email, page on the schools website or even an official facebook school page.

2. Students need to know that such gossip sites are against the law.

As well as being against most schools policies, students should be aware that such sites may be against the law.

This can vary from state to state (and obviously country to country) but sites like these may fall under the following laws.

Section 474.17 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 makes it an offence to use telecommunication services to menace, harass or cause offence (punishable by 3 years). It does not matter whether the menace or threat is caused by the type of use (such as multiple postings on a website) or by the content of the communication or both, provided reasonable persons would regard the use as being menacing, harassing or offensive in all the circumstances. (*reference)

Such sites may also fall under the Stalking and Harassment laws if they continally pinpoint certain students. It may also be seen as Criminal Defamation or even Intentional Infliction of Mental Harm.

For more information about certain laws, see this report from the Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law.

3. More needs to be done to educate students, teachers and parents.

To take a more proactive approach to these issues, schools need to be on the front foot when it comes to cybersafety. Schools need to be creating strong ICT and Cybersafety policies for their students. Cybersafety issues and lessons need to be embedded within the curriculum and not a last thought add on.

Teachers also need to be aware of the technological frameworks the students live in to be able to discuss these issues with their students. ACMA has just started a great online PD for teachers called connect.ed which can be found here.

4. Schools need to have a strong internet presence.

An important element to pages like this is the damage it can do to a school’s reputation. If pages or websites like this go unchecked they can suddenly be high on a school’s google search.

Many schools do not have a strong internet presence. A static webpage may not be enough to keep hold of google’s attention when the first thing a prospective parent will be doing is researching your school online to see what comes up. The last thing a school wants is a gossip site to come up on the first page of results.

What few schools to well, and what most should be doing more is taking charge of their online presence. This includes a dynamic school website or blog with appropriate SEO (search engine optimisation). A school should also be actively involved with the creation and updating of it’s Wikipedia page as this is often high on a google search.

Other things to think about also is having an official youtube page with various videos from the school community (making sure you have all the appropriate releases of course). Youtube is of course owned by google so youtube results often come high on google searches. Having a positive presence on social networking sites such as facebook and twitter can help encourage a community feeling between the school, students and parents. Careful moderation would be needed for these sites but the communication channels these open up can be great.

5. Hate the Player, not the Game

It’s easy for schools to come down hard on sites like facebook because of instances such as these but it’s important to see the amazing benefits of New Media within schools. Students and teachers are using these tools in and out of classrooms in amazing ways every day and creating reactive and harsh IT policies isn’t the way to go. As always, education will save the day.

Schools for the moment should consider themselves lucky that this seems to be a facebook phenomenon right now as their are definite procedures in place to react to these pages. What happens when these sites move off facebook and onto other sites where it’s harder to remove the content? This is why it’s so important to have both reactive and proactive procedures in place.