Abstract
Abstract
 In this article, the author provides a legal perspective on the interplay between social media use and employment. The unique characteristics of social media are identified in order to frame the article before a number of considerations with regard to employment relationships that impact on deciding social media misconduct cases are deliberated upon. Thereafter, the author reflects on the implications of social media transgressions for educators' professions and contemplates the forms that social media misconduct by South African educators can take, with specific focus on defamation. Before the article reaches its conclusion, social media evidence and the impact of the unique characteristics of social media on users' legitimate expectations of privacy are also considered. The article concludes with a few guidelines on how educators can avoid the pitfalls that make social media use potentially hazardous to their employment.
 
Highlights
Educators may labour under the misconception that their social network sites are personal and private and have nothing to do with their employers
The unique characteristics of social media are identified in order to frame the article before a number of considerations with regard to employment relationships that impact on deciding social media misconduct cases are deliberated upon
Before looking at the unique characteristics of social media that can make the use thereof hazardous to educators' employment, it is necessary to definesocial media. ʺSocial mediaare forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content.[7]
Summary
Educators may labour under the misconception that their social network sites are personal and private and have nothing to do with their employers. In blog entries posted while she was at work doing score cards she stated that, if she had to be truthful, she would have described the respective learners as a “complete and utter jerk in all ways, alazy asshole, adunderhead, anA.I.R.H.E.A.D.ʺ, ʺrat-like, and awhiny, simpering grade-grubber with an unrealistically high perception of own ability level. In State of Wisconsin v Ebersold,[4] an educator who sent sexually explicit messages to a learner in an internet chat room was dismissed on the grounds that he hadverbally communicated a harmful description or narrative account to a child, contrary to WIS STAT § 948.11(2)(am) (2005-06)ʺ The educator appealed his conviction, arguing that sending messages via a chatroom does not constitute verbal communication and that the Statute does not apply. The unique characteristics of social media are discussed first
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