Social media archiving for Ohio public offices.

Generally yes. Under the Ohio Public Records Act (R.C. 149.43), a record is information kept by a public office that documents its organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations or other activities. The format does not matter. A post, a photo caption, a reply and a comment thread on an official account can all meet that definition, which means they fall under your approved records retention schedule the same as an email or a memo.

There is no single statewide number. Retention is set by your own records retention schedule, approved by your records commission under R.C. 149.38 through 149.412. The practical step is to classify social media content against the schedule you already have, then make sure the capture method actually holds it for that long. Most offices find their existing schedule already covers the content and the gap is capture, not policy.

Be careful. Deleting content that qualifies as a record can conflict with your retention schedule, and removing or blocking constituents on an official account can raise First Amendment questions. The U.S. Supreme Court addressed when a public official’s social media activity counts as state action in Lindke v. Freed (2024). The safe pattern is a written policy, consistent enforcement, and an archive that preserves what was posted even if it later comes down.

Not in any practical sense. A screenshot captures one moment, loses the metadata, the thread and the edit history, and depends on someone remembering to take it. If a records request or a lawsuit arrives, you need the full record with timestamps and context, not a folder of images. Continuous automated capture is the difference between having an archive and having a habit.

Personal accounts are generally outside your archive, but the line moves when an employee or elected official uses a personal account to conduct public business. That is precisely the situation Lindke v. Freed dealt with. The workable answer is a policy that tells staff which account to use for official business, so the record lands where you can retain it.

Most use a dedicated social media archiving service that connects to the account through the platform API and captures posts, replies and edits continuously. Web Chick does not sell or resell archiving. This page exists because the offices we build websites for kept asking what the rules were, and the answers were hard to find in one place.