Canadian University Social Software Guidelines and Academic Freedom: An Alarming Labour Trend

Abstract

An analysis of first-stage social software guidelines of nine Canadian universities conducted in the 2012-13 academic year with the aim to reveal limits to academic freedom. Carleton University’s guidelines serve as the anchor case, while those of eight other institutions are included to signify a national trend. Implications for this work are central to academic labour. In as much as academic staff have custody and control of all records they create, except records created in and for administrative capacity, these guidelines are interpreted to be alarming. Across the guidelines, framing of social media use by academic staff (even for personal use) as representative of the university assumes academic staff should have an undying loyalty to their institution. The guidelines are read as obvious attempts to control rather than merely guide, and speak to the nature of institutional overreach in the related names of reputation (brand), responsibility (authoritarianism), safety (paternalistically understood and enforced), and the free marketplace of [the right] ideas.