DCMS Social media moderation policy

We encourage and welcome open conversation that is civil and relevant. We won’t suppress legitimate debate of relevant issues. We also want to ensure people’s safety online, so we’ve provided the following guidelines.

You should:

• respect other comments and individuals – comments should not be malicious or offensive, and should not constitute a personal attack on a person’s character
• be reasonably concise, and don’t spam the channel
• use English, unfortunately we can’t moderate comments in other languages
• stay on-topic

You must not:

• reveal personal details, such as private addresses, phone numbers, email addresses or other online contact details
• break the law (this includes libel), condone illegal activity or break copyright
• swear, make malicious or offensive comments
• incite hatred on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality or sexuality or other personal characteristics
• advertise commercial products and services, you can mention relevant campaigns, initiatives, products and services as long as they support your comment(s)
• impersonate or falsely claim to represent a person or organisation
• post messages that are unrelated to the topic of the original post

Our social media channels are managed by the DCMS Communications Team.

We review messages and posts during office hours, Monday to Friday (not including public holidays) but don’t reply to all of them. We will try to make sure the feedback we’re getting from you gets to the appropriate people within the Department. We reserve the right to remove or suspend comments at any time. For serious or persistent breaches of the moderation policy, we reserve the right to prevent users from posting further comments. We can’t discuss party political issues. If we share information from other websites and sources it doesn’t imply any kind of endorsement.

Twitter

The DCMS Twitter account account is reactively moderated.

If you follow @DCMS, you can expect regular tweets covering:

• news stories, announcements and useful facts and figures
• campaign messages, consultations and other publications
• speeches, visits, media interviews, statements by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and our ministers
• retweets of announcements by UK government departments, arms-length bodies, other organisations relevant to DCMS and interesting stories, comments or opinion which we think will be of interest to our followers

If you follow @dcms we will not automatically follow you back.

If we follow a Twitter account or refer to existing hashtags it doesn’t imply any kind of endorsement.

If you are a member of the media and have an enquiry, please contact the DCMS Press Office on 020 8080 3054. Please don’t use Twitter to contact us.

Facebook

The DCMS Facebook page is reactively moderated. We can’t accept responsibility for the content of any comments. We review messages and posts during office hours, Monday to Friday (not including public holidays) but don’t generally reply to them.

If we embed a film from another Facebook member we may:

• proportionally resize the window within the embed code to work within our website templates
• embed films within news stories and blogs to provide wider context into the subject matter portrayed in the film

Instagram

The DCMS Instagram page is reactively moderated. We can’t accept responsibility for the content of any comments. We review messages and posts during office hours, Monday to Friday (not including public holidays) but don’t generally reply to them.

LinkedIn

The DCMS LinkedIn page is reactively moderated. We can’t accept responsibility for the content of any comments. We review messages and posts during office hours, Monday to Friday (not including public holidays) but don’t generally reply to them.

YouTube

We use to YouTube to:

• host films produced by the department on the DCMS channel, some of which we embed in our website
• source relevant films from other YouTube members that promote our policies or promote the work of another organisation, campaign or initiative that we are associated with or interested in to embed in our website
• favourite films by organisations, campaigns and initiatives that we are associated with

If we embed a film from another YouTube member or video hosting site, we:

• may proportionally resize the window within the embed code to work within our website templates
• embed films within news stories and blogs to provide wider context into the subject matter portrayed in the film

We welcome subscribers to our channel, but reserve the right to remove any subscriber that hosts content which is malicious or offensive in nature (e.g incites hatred on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality or sexuality or other personal characteristics).

We generally pre-moderate comments submitted to the DCMS YouTube channel. This means that comments won’t be published instantly – DCMS moderators will check them first. Moderators will monitor the site during office hours, Monday to Friday.Moderation is intended to prevent people publishing private, personal information that could open them up to fraud.

Moderators will remove any comment they consider to be inappropriate, that breaks these rules or is not in line with the YouTube Community Guidelines. We reserve the right to suspend comments at any time.

Accessibility

We are committed to ensuring our social media content is accessible to a wide range of users, including people with disabilities and impairments, by adhering to WCAG 2.1 guidelines where possible. To do this we endeavour to:

• where platforms allow, ensure all non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose
• where platforms allow, ensure all text presented within animations has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose
• provide subtitles (either embedded or as closed captions) for all pre-produced video content featuring spoken language that the department publishes
• provide full transcripts of the audio when we upload audio only files (such as DCMS podcasts)
• avoid using emojis to communicate core messages

Please read our Accessible Publications Policy for details on how accessible the documents DCMS publishes are on GOV.UK.

Other Channels

We may use alternative channels to promote our messages. The same overall moderation policy applies to all channels and tools.

More information

For further information, please use our online enquiry form or email us at enquiries@dcms.gov.uk.