Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, YouTube, Flickr, and Instagram, has become an important communication route for State Agencies to interact with Agency workers, constituents, and the public. As with all records made or received pursuant to law or ordinance in connection with the transaction of public business by any Agency in North Carolina, postings on social media are public records subject to the provisions of GS.132. This applies to both original posts and responses to posts, including responses from non-Agency employees and members of the public.
The 2021 Functional Schedule for North Carolina State Agencies, that will be effective from July 1, 2021, incorporates changes to RC.1515 to give greater clarity to the disposition and appraisal of social media.
As described in the footnote to RC.1515 the State Archives will periodically retrieve State Agency social media accounts that have been appraised as archival from the internet and transfer them to the custody of the Archives for permanent retention. Each account will be appraised individually because they are all used differently: some contain original content or material not readily available elsewhere, while others only contain links to records already managed by other means. Most will be a mixture. A major appraisal consideration is therefore the extent of original content.
Appraisals will be undertaken by the Records Management Analyst for the Agency that created the social media account following the workflow shown below.
Note that this workflow only covers social media accounts. It does not apply to websites archived through Archive-It! web archiving services.
*The Analyst, in conjunction with the Appraisal Archivist and/or Record Description Supervisor, will base their appraisal on:
- Is the social media content a public record?
- Does the content express or describe the Agency’s policies or mission?
- The uniqueness of the content.
- Is it available elsewhere?
- Is it already being managed as another record type?
- Are there comments/responses/direct messages that need to be captured?
- Does the Agency respond to comments through the social media site?
- Which Functional Schedule item applies?
- Does the content have historical significance?
For example, a LinkedIn account used to promote and publicize job vacancies at an Agency would likely not be considered archival because the content is managed as another record type, is available elsewhere, and does not have historical significance.
After concurrence, the Appraisal Archivist and/or Records Description Unit Supervisor will inform the Analyst and Digital Services Section of the appraisal decision. The Analyst will subsequently inform the Agency of the decision.
If the appraisal identifies the social media account as one for permanent retention by the State Archives, Digital Services Section will start to periodically retrieve and archive records from the account. In all other instances the originating Agency will be responsible for managing records from the social media account in accordance with the Records Retention Schedule.
The G.S. 132 Files 