Wright State University: Facebook Comments Restricted During Faculty Union Strike
Cases
Wright State University
Case Overview
After a January 2019 faculty strike by the Wright State University branch of the American Association of University Professors, FIREissued a public records request to WSU for particular Facebook comment threads relating to the strike. In the hundreds of pages of HTML code that we received, FIREdiscovered that WSU often censored posts unfavorable to WSU鈥檚 positions on the strike. These posts were censored pursuant to WSU鈥檚 vague social media guidelines, which allowed administrators to remove posts they viewed as, among other things, 鈥減ropaganda,鈥 鈥渇oul,鈥 鈥渢rolling,鈥 鈥渙ffensive,鈥 or 鈥渋nflammatory鈥 鈥 giving them unfettered discretion to delete posts contrary to the administration鈥檚 views. On January 23, 2020, FIREwrote to WSU to bring public attention to WSU鈥檚 censorship and request that WSU rescind its unconstitutional social media guidelines. In response, WSU revised its social media policy and trained its staff on the new policy.