Social Media Panic at Schools: Crisis Management during False Alarms

[by Howard Fencl] A photo of a bomb with today’s date is found in a high school restroom. The school is evacuated. Police are called. Students seeing police with guns drawn on the campus misconstrue the scene as an active shooter on the loose and again call police. They also post the misinformation on social media, which exacerbates panic.

No bomb was found.

Across the country, a student tells police he’s hiding in the school with weapons and getting ready to kill students and teachers. The school is locked down. Students begin posting to social media that they see explosive devices and the barricaded suspect.

None of it was true.

In the old days, troublemakers in school pulled fire alarms and ran. Now they simply post to social media.

We hear about these incidents happening more frequently because social media makes it easy for kids to hide behind an anonymous account and post rumors and misinformation. Everyone retweets the rumor, then misinformation begins to spiral out of control.

This has become a multi-faceted communications challenge for school leadership. Recently, I was asked by WKYC-TV how administrators can more effectively handle social media panic at schools. Leadership should fight fire with fire – but needs to remember some old-school communication tools as well:

• Embrace social media. Use it proactively and aggressively. When there is an incident in which students are causing panic posting false information on social media, schools need to jump on social media platforms, immediately correct misinformation and provide updates as soon as new information becomes available.
• They should also correct misinformation the old-fashioned way: in all-school P.A. announcements.
• They need to deputize every teacher in every classroom and instruct them to present the true facts with kids, using consistent messages, throughout the day.
• Administrators need to immediately get email out to all parents explaining the situation and correcting the misinformation – and also send kids home with an old-school paper memo for parents who don’t use email. New private mobile messaging platforms such as Remind are gaining in popularity and can be used to help schools stay in touch with parents and students in real-time using smartphones.
• And finally, schools need to designate a media go-to person to issue statements and handle news media calls from the moment the situation breaks until it is resolved.

School systems should integrate social media into K-12 curriculum to teach kids acceptable and unacceptable uses of the medium. Equally important, schools must have a written policy baked into student handbooks, and reinforce it frequently in classrooms and at all-school assemblies throughout the school year.

Students need to understand that just as there are serious consequences for pulling a fire alarm in school, there are serious consequences for kids who cause panic via social media.

Some of this issue will likely dissipate as post-millennials – who were born into social media technology and to whom it is second nature – enter the teaching workforce. In the meantime, teachers and school leadership need to get smarter quicker on the use of social media. There’s simply no room for Luddites on school staffs any more.

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