| Summary: | With interactive social media rapidly evolving, any large Higher Education Institution (HEI) ought to be planning, at the highest level, for the opportunities and attendant risks presented by social media facilities that are not password protected. The work that follows reviews the emergence of social media, analyses various areas of good and bad practice, indicates possible opportunities and outlines perceived negative aspects that need careful consideration. To maintain a focused approached to the primary research objectives and to clearly scope the exercise, it was deemed appropriate to curtail the investigation to UK-based activity. It may be that following this particular work further research on a wider scale could offer additional insight to this field. A live test site has been developed to discover at firsthand possible strengths and weaknesses. The site is based within an Art and Design discipline as this encapsulates the majority of content and stimuli that would fully test HEI website parameters. The thesis is therefore in part 'practice' as the generation and on-going management of a course-specific test website and additional social media add-ons required a substantial proportion of research time to construct, develop and manage during the major part of the investigation. This aspect also required gaining Institutional approval to generate, upload and maintain a fully functioning course- specific sub-site outside of the University's general operating framework. (Ref. www.viscombelfast.com). Based on firsthand information and secondary source review, the work concludes with a proposed set of 'Opportunity/Risk/Protocol' guidelines that provide an insight into the opportunities and attendant risks associated with the integration of social media as part of an HEls web presence, as open access interactive media pervades ever deeper into cyber culture. It is envisaged that the findings may ultimately be of use to social media website development/maintenance in other domains.
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