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Divesting from Facebook and Instagram
Journal of Education Advancement & Marketing,
8
(3),
202-214
(2023)
Abstract
Scrolling down to the bottom of almost any higher education website reveals logos from a company that is well known for losing data, adversely affecting mental health and adding to political division in countries around the world. Those logos are for Meta products Facebook and Instagram. For years there was no question that including those logos on the page indicated a way for prospective students to learn more about the school. In 2023 those logos are less a display of value-added content and more an endorsement of Meta as a company. In this paper that endorsement is called into question. Audiences are changing, engagement patterns are changing and the value of Meta platforms themselves is changing. This paper examines strategic and moral reasons to step away from Meta, offers suggestions for paths beyond Meta, and calls on higher education marketers to reconsider how and why they use Facebook and Instagram to connect with current and prospective students.
Keywords: social media; social networking; radicalisation; enrolment cliff; Meta; social strategy; content marketing; brand reputation
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Andrew Cassel has spent more than a decade developing higher education social content strategies and maintaining digital communities. He has spoken about social media and social networks at conferences held by the American Geophysical Union, ContentEd, eduWeb and HighEdWeb. Upcoming appearances include ‘Artificial Intelligence, Organic Insights: AI Generated Art as a Social Listening Tool’ at the 2023 HighEdWeb Annual Conference. Cassel was a 2019 host for Higher Ed Marketing Live and regularly contributes to Voltedu with articles about Pinterest, Fizz and using AI as a higher education marketer. He is currently the senior social strategist at Middlebury College, Vermont.
