Social Media Protocol

Social Media Protocol

Are you looking for reliable local health information? Do you have questions or comments? Connect with the City of Ottawa's official source for health information.

Follow Ottawa Public Health (OPH) on Twitter, our various Facebook and Instagram pages and our Youtube Channel. We ask that you please abide by the Terms of Use for the company hosting the social media site.

OPH's social media accounts are managed by the Public Information and Health Communications Team. If you follow us, you can expect content related to:

  • Ottawa Public Health awareness campaigns, programs and health promotion;
  • Newsworthy events involving public health organizations and health initiatives; and
  • Timely notifications that affect residents and partner/stakeholder organizations.

Availability

OPH regularly updates and actively monitors its social media accounts and strives to respond in a timely fashion. Note: You can expect a delay in response to a message received outside regular business hours. If it's an emergency, please dial 9-1-1.

Following and likes

OPH follows and likes other social media accounts. Please note that being followed or liked by OPH does not imply endorsement of any kind.

Re-posting

OPH will share content that it deems of value to its followers. Messages shared by OPH should not be interpreted as an OPH endorsement of the originator, of its messages or of any organization.

Direct messages, @replies and comments

OPH welcomes feedback and ideas from all its followers. Messages, @replies and comments are monitored and will be actioned accordingly. Any emerging themes, questions or comments may be shared internally to relevant staff and stakeholders.

To ensure that the conversation remains in good taste and a positive experience for everyone involved, comments and replies should be respectful and appropriate, in addition to being relevant and related to the posted topic on the OPH's social media account. 

Any comments of the following nature may be deleted: 

  • Offensive, profane, hateful, insulting, rude, abusive, aggressive, violent, obscene, explicit, pornographic or sexual comments. 

  • Content that promotes, fosters or perpetuates discrimination on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, age, creed, gender, marital status, socio-economic status, physical or mental disability, or sexual orientation. 

  • Personal attacks and/or defamatory statements.

  • Serious, unproven, unsupported, or inaccurate accusations.

  • Messages for advertising/marketing purposes.

  • Messages that conduct or encourage illegal activity.

  • Information that could compromise public safety, security or operations. 

  • Messages that impersonate or misrepresent someone else.

  • Comments that include potentially harmful misinformation or disinformation.

  • Comments containing spam or posted by anonymous or robot accounts. 

  • Unintelligible messages. 

To protect your own privacy and the privacy of others, do not include personal information including but not limited to, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses in your @replies and messages. 

We reserve the right to delete user’s comments that violate this notice, and the user’s access to our social media accounts may be revoked (and their account may be reported) to prevent further inappropriate comments. 

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