Social Media Policy

Overview

Social media accounts associated with the City of Bowling Green do not constitute an official form of communication for legal notice, specific requests for service, or to report a crime. While social media is a 24/7 medium, the City cannot monitor, post, or respond to comments 24/7. Generally, the City will post or respond to comments from 8 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday.

To make official inquiries to the City, please call the Mayor/Municipal Administrator's Office at 419-354-6204. To report a crime, please contact the Police Division at 419-352-1131 for non-emergencies or call 911 with an emergency.

Administrative Instruction Number 16

Social media accounts associated with the City are maintained in an effort to provide timely information and disseminate information regarding municipal operations. These accounts are intended to supplement and enhance official communications (e.g., news releases). The City assumes no responsibility for any content and/or information not posted directly by the City. While all viewpoints are welcome, comments should remain relevant to the topic at hand, should not contain profanity or promote discrimination, and should not include spam, business solicitations or political advertisements. The City reserves the right to review, edit, modify, or delete any comment to a City social media account by a user that violates this Policy, and also reserves the right to block comments or users that are deemed inappropriate or abusive. 

Examples of comments that violate this Policy are as follows:

• Hate speech, including but not limited to comments that promote, foster, or perpetuate discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, age, religion, gender, marital status, genetics, status with regard to public assistance, national origin, physical or intellectual disability or sexual orientation
• Profanity, obscenity, or vulgarity, including creative spellings of swear words using asterisks or other symbols
• Sexual content or links to sexual content
• Personal attacks or defamation to a person or group of people
• Comments that promote or advertise a person or a business or commercial transaction
• Comments that promote or oppose any person campaigning for election to a political office or that promote or oppose any ballot measure
• Comments that infringe on copyrights
• Spam comments, such as the same comment posted repeatedly
• Any other comments that the department head responsible for the social media account deems inappropriate

Any content maintained in a social media format that is posted to an account associated with the City may be considered a public record. In general, content posted by the City will be considered transient or a copy of an official record and may be deleted once the item is no longer of administrative value.