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Social Work and Social Media: Best Friends or Natural Enemies?

In the contemporary connected world, the news media appears captivated by stories of ‘trolling,’ ‘sexting’ and other seemingly transgressive behaviours on social media, raising public concerns about ethical behaviour, privacy and particularly the safety of young people online. This generic anxiety produces particular issues for the social work profession, with its traditional emphasis on boundaries and confidentiality around often sensitive information. Guidance from professional regulators and other advisory bodies often struggles to respond to the pace of change and cannot fully embrace the complexity of the ‘context collapse’ provoked by social networking (Wesch, 2008). Similarly, significant literature on social networking concentrates on the potentially negative social implications (Turkle, 2011), thereby furthering the generic anxiety around the subject. This anxiety is not, however, a uniquely contemporary concern. Bartlett (2015) describes Socrates’ apprehensions about the deleterious effects that the creation of writing may have on young people, whilst the development of both the radio and the printing press was also greeted with fears that they would overwhelm people with information and contaminate their minds. In Victorian times too, the notorious ‘Penny Dreadful’ weekly news sheets were attributed with a decline in the moral values and behaviour of young people, leading to concomitant societal breakdown (Anglo, 1977). This Special Edition represents a response to much of the anxiety and despondency which surrounds the subject of social media in social work. At a recent Annual Board meeting in March 2016, the discussion rapidly turned to the challenges of social media and the creation of sites that threaten to kill or harm social workers, as well as the need to protect service users from harm. However, a Board member from Nepal also cited the ways in which social networking considerably aided the international responses to the recent disasters in his country and you can see him describe this in our online editorial. As Guest Editors, we do not seek to minimise the significant and ongoing challenges created by online networking, but we do wish to celebrate the ways in which this is being adopted in positive ways as a tool for change within social work education and practice. All of the Special Edition Editors have personal experiences of building and joining positive online communities in both our personal and professional lives. Denise Turner has written about her experience of running an online Twitter chat which sustained her during the final stretch of her PhD thesis (Turner, 2014). This experience is mirrored in the development of a multitude of relevant, diverse and international online communities, from @ SWBookGroup to @SocialCareCurry. Claudia Megele is an authority in the world of social media where her work spans theorisation and practical application. She has written widely on the topic and developed the ENABLE model for incorporating social media into academic curricula (Megele, 2014). She has created global communities including @MHChat and @SWSCmedia. She was voted one of the top 50 most influential higher education professionals using social media in 2015. Gerry Bennison is a keen advocate of User involvement in Health and Social Care research and practice and a prolific user of the online platform ‘Twitter’.