Managing Social Media as Records

When an organization — especially a government agency — posts on social media, those posts can be records. Official accounts on platforms like X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others document the organization’s activities and communications, which means they’re subject to the same recordkeeping obligations as other records.

Why social media is a records concern

• Posts document business. Official announcements, responses to the public, and policy statements are records when they document the organization’s activities.
• It’s subject to retention and disclosure. Social media records can be responsive to FOIA and public-records requests and discoverable in litigation.
• Platforms aren’t archives. A platform can change terms, delete content, or disappear; relying on it to preserve your records is risky.
• Interactivity complicates it. Comments, replies, and direct messages — not just your own posts — may be records, and content changes constantly.

NARA provides guidance specifically on managing federal social media records, reflecting that this is an established recordkeeping obligation, not a gray area.

Capturing social media records

• Identify official accounts and who is responsible for them.
• Determine what’s a record — typically the agency’s posts and substantive interactions, per a retention schedule.
• Capture content with context — the post plus metadata (timestamps, account, and where relevant, comments/replies). Purpose-built social media capture/archiving tools exist because manual screenshots don’t scale or preserve context reliably.
• Apply retention and holds to captured content like any other record.
• Don’t rely on the platform as your system of record.

The principle

Social media is just another channel where business communications happen — and, like email, chat, and text, content (not channel) determines whether it’s a record. Capture it from the platforms where it’s created, with enough context to be trustworthy, and govern it under your schedule. See the email and messaging records hub for more.