Colleges consider impact Meerkat, Periscope will have on campuses

Megan Raposa | Augustana College

New live video-streaming apps Meerkat and Periscope have had tech bloggers and tweeters agog. Both apps connect to a user's Twitter account, though Periscope, owned by Twitter, saves the video for 24 hours and Meerkat's disappears once you finish the broadcast.

But the apps have also raised concerns about potential privacy and legal issues. And given that campuses are a likely place both apps will take off, we did a quick canvas of a handful of colleges to see how they feel about the latest trend in social media and its potential challenges to privacy rights. For the most part, the apps have been met with either a wait-and-see approach, or a shrug of the shoulders.



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“Our approach with all social media activities on campus has been to provide education to students on best practices (and) to encourage them to be thoughtful,” says Cara Rousseau, manager of digital and social media strategy at Duke University. “The addition of live-streaming video apps just adds another element to how we coordinate and coach students in the community here. That said, we would be concerned about classroom use and other potential invasions of privacy, but … I think we have the same issues already with the current applications that people are using.”

In fact, she sees an opportunity for Meerkat and Periscope to be a part of the “tool kit” used by the college marketing and communications arms. Events like commencement, she says, that are already live-streamed might benefit from such video feeds.

Of course, she adds, "like any other tool that’s hot and talked about, we’re going to be watching it closely and perhaps experimenting, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they're ultimately a game-changer for higher education.”



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Oregon State Social Media Coordinator Colin Huber says, "I don't really want to speculate on what kind of events would be inappropriate or sensitive. Yes, it's live. Yes, it's a little more instant, but people still can take their phones out, take pictures and put it on social media. It's very much the same as what we already have."

And he sees similarities between the reactions to the two new apps and initial responses to video-streaming apps when they first launched.

“When (Snapchat) first came out, everyone was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is just something where people can send inappropriate things,'” Huber says. “I think it evolved into something a little bit more than what people thought it would be.”

Huber says Oregon State’s athletics department has already begun using live video streaming to show behind-the-scenes action before the game.

At the University of Michigan, guidelines for video-streaming apps are no different than guidelines for journalists or media on campus, according to Director of Social Media Nikki Sunstrum.



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Sunstrum says the U of M is still investigating what a long-term strategy for official college usage of Meerkat and Periscope might look like, but in the meantime, student usage of the apps is being treated no differently than any other social media.

"In a public space, we don't regulate the usage of social media by our constituents," Sunstrum says.

Janet Blank-Libra, however, a journalism professor at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., says she's concerned about protecting students rights to privacy.

"Certainly, videos such as these have the potential to violate someone's privacy and in doing so to potentially subject that person to ridicule and embarrassment," Blank-Libra says. "I don't like it."



Megan Raposa is a student at Augustana College and a spring 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.