Online Services Guidelines        

Editorial values   
Editorial responsibility   
Accuracy   
Fairness, contributors, and consent   
Privacy   
Harm and offence   
Children   
Politics, elections and polling   
War, terror and emergencies   
Equal opportunities and diversity   
Links to external sites   
Credits for outside providers of material   
Partnerships, including partnerships with business   
Interacting with our audiences   
The law   
Accountability and complaints   

Section 9: War, terror and emergencies    

Introduction
The British Council has a special responsibility to its UK and international audiences when hosting discussions on its websites at times of conflict. At such times some of our audiences may expect us to provide space online for a wide range of views and opinions which other audiences may find challenging. We will only do this in ways which make our positive intent to increase intercultural understanding explicit.

User generated content in time of conflict
There are special sensitivities about issues such as operational military action, about not naming casualties until next-of-kin have been informed, and about how to handle unsubstantiated rumours. This applies particularly to user-generated content.

On such occasions, we may publish additional guidelines to the effect that:

we will concentrate comment and debate about the conflict in a limited number of spaces, with additional hosting and moderation, to maintain a full debate   
we will be prepared to switch to premoderation if necessary   
we may ask for claims or statements by third parties to be attributed so that their status becomes easier for our users to evaluate.   

DCSIMG