Ethical Practice of Social Media in Public Relations

Marcia W. DiStaso, Denise Sevick Bortree, Marcia W. DiStaso, Denise Sevick Bortree

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317917892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Scienze della comunicazione

Given the high rate of social media use by the public, organizations are compelled to engage with key audiences through these outlets. Social media engagement requires organizations to actively participate with public groups, and this highly-interactive exchange raises a new set of ethical concerns for communicators. In this rapidly changing communications environment, the long-term implications of social media are uncertain, and this book provides the much needed research to understand its impact on audiences and organizations.

Through an examination of a broad range of ethics concepts including transparency and online identities, policies, corporate responsibility, and measurement, this book explores a variety of topics important to public relations such as diversity, non-profit communication, health communication, financial communication, public affairs, entertainment communication, environmental communication, crisis communication, and non-profit communication.The chapter authors, expert scholars within theirfields of public relations, offer insights drawn from original research and case study examples of ethical dilemmas raised by social media communication.

Part I
Transparency and Online Identities

1 Openness and Disclosure in Social Media Efforts

A Frank Discussion With Fortune 500 And Philanthropy 400 Communication Leaders

Richard D. Waters

Introduction

Social media are internet-based applications that were created to capture the technological foundations and ideological spirit of Web 2.0, which generally focuses on openness, participation and interactivity, and collaboration (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). The practice of public relations has certainly expanded to include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and the countless other social media platforms currently in existence; however, the claim that public relations is “undergoing a revolution” (Hazleton, Harrison-Rexrode, & Kennan, 2008, p. 91) may be a slight exaggeration. Although consultants and agencies are prone to announce that social media are changing the practice of public relations, objective academic research has yet to show a major change in organizations’ public relations approaches.

A multitude of studies have come forth to show that whether it be blogs (Seltzer & Mitrook, 2007), Facebook (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009; Bortree & Seltzer, 2009), or Twitter (Bortree, 2012), organizations are still primarily using these dynamic platforms to push one-way messages out onto their stakeholders. Social media advocate Brian Solis (2008) claims that because of social media usage the organizational “monologue has given way to dialogue” (p. xviii). However, this simply has not been shown to be the case. While the Web 1.0 era is largely associated with virtual brochures in regard to organizational websites, Web 2.0 can best be summarized as virtual megaphones as for-profits, nonprofits, and government agencies are using social media platforms to broadcast their messages in direct competition with messages from individuals’ personal networks. This blending of institutional commercials and interpersonal conversations and updates has resulted in massive amounts of noise, which caused Tittel (2011) to question the efficacy of social media marketing, advertising, and public relations.

Despite the proliferation of social media studies that gain traction in academic journals and conferences, critics have started to emerge. Kent (2008) encouraged the industry to use a critical eye to examine the blogosphere and its potential benefits before adding it to the organization’s communication toolbox. Critics have also cautioned that although Facebook may have more than 1 billion users, it is not a warm, welcoming environment for organizations. Vorvoreanu (2009) found that individuals were apathetic to organizations attempting to establish a presence on Facebook and other social networking sites. They may not have felt strongly against organizations having a Facebook account, but they were not overly supportive. Others have questioned the mad rush to social media as the saving grace for relationship building by public relations practitioners by having more objective research to determine whether or not social media truly have long-term benefits (Hearn, Foth, & Gray, 2009). Unlike white papers and agency reports stemming from agencies and consultants who have a profit seeking motive to produce favorable social media research, strategic communication scholars need to critically examine its role and subject its practices to more theory rather than simply caving into the marketers’ hype.

International consulting firm KPMG best summarized the current state of social media usage stating that “the bottom line is that it’s just new for everybody . . . there are no rules, there’s a lot of trial and error, there’s a lot of testing, a lot of learning, and then applying it” (KPMG, 2011, p. 4). There have been several situations where organizations have had social media successes, but the rare wins must be considered in relation to the numerous campaigns that are barely hanging on and treading water. The purpose of this chapter is to explore a vital dimension of web communication, openness, and disclosure, to determine its place in social media campaigns. Although previous studies have used content analysis to gauge the level of openness and disclosure used in organizational social media profiles, this study aims to more deeply investigate the role of openness and disclosure by interviewing strategic communication leaders at Fortune 500 and Philanthropy 400 organizations to gather their thoughts on organizational openness in social media.

Openness and Disclosure in Public Relations

As social media usage continues to increase among the users of all demographic ranges, organizations have been encouraged to secure their places in the various platforms—Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and beyond—to tap into the community-building nature of social media. Logging into personal accounts, individuals have already been bombarded with sponsored tweets and Facebook updates from brands; those that have followed or liked a company also have the ability to interact with the company. But, what does it truly mean to send a tweet to @HomeDepot or @WaltDisney-World? Is the faceless entity United Way really responding to a post on its Facebook profile? Given the close, interpersonal nature of the medium has led many organizations to recognize that this cold, faceless approach to their online communication is not effective.

Figure 1.1 A screen shot of the Twitter profile, @DeltaAssist, used to help Delta Airlines customers.

Whether taking to Twitter, Facebook, or a company blog, the Web 2.0 environment has resulted in individuals taking their questions, concerns, and complaints with institutions into the public domain. Several organizations have begun updating profiles and individual messages to demonstrate greater accountability so that people know who it is at the organization speaking with them behind the computer screen—not just an institutional logo. For example, the vice president of Social Media and Community at Dell uses his name and company connection openly in his Twitter ID (@ManishatDell). Likewise, Delta Airlines encourages those employees monitoring its Twitter accounts (@Delta and @DeltaAssist) to reply using their initials to provide greater accountability to those interacting with the company online. Figure 1.1 presents the homescreen for the @DeltaAssist Twitter page, which shows a list of employees tweeting under their initials on the left side of the webpage and several examples of employees reaching out to concerned customers via personally signed tweets on the actual Twitter-stream.

Likewise, companies have taken to Facebook to provide names and contact information of employees monitoring and responding via the institutional profiles. For example, employees of Time Warner Cable reached out directly to customers who have had issues with the company. In a posting made on September 30, 2012, several customers responded to a Time Warner Cable message about a “Most Valuable Fan” contest with questions about their inability to use Time Warner Cable internet services to participate. Demonstrating elements of disclosure as to who was monitoring the accounts, Time Warner Cable employees responded personally to the complaints. An employee replied, “I would be happy to investigate your connection” and gave further offline contact information; he also signed his comment from the Time Warner Cable profile by using “—Jim” at the end of the update.

These efforts to connect organizational profiles to specific employees are examples of how institutions are trying to adapt to an environment created specifically for one-on-one interactions at the individual level. However, these attempts to connect often fail. Attempting to be helpful to customers, some institutions have used employees’ names or initials to provide a point of contact for assistants and to demonstrate that individuals actually monitor the accounts. However, when organizations receive a flood of messages from various stakeholders, it may not be possible to reply to every situation in a timely manner. This lack of a response—now coming from individuals and not just a cold, faceless organization—can cause more resentment and outrage at the brand.

Measuring Openness and Disclosure

Although the provision of names can help demonstrate an organization’s openness and disclosure, it is only a small portion of the topic. Scholars have grappled with how to best measure and demonstrate organizational openness and disclosure online. Various approaches have been taken, including Kent and Taylor’s (1998) principles of dialogic communication and WEBQUAL (Loiacono, Watson, & Goodhue, 2002). The former approach has been conceptually defined to focus on the provision of organizational history, current news, and specific contact information of employees as elements of disclosure and openness; the latter perspective takes a similar approach as it evolved over the years to broaden its scope from simply looking at the functionality of a website to being more representative of a two-sided web-based relationship, which includes information exchanges that include information about the communicator. Organizations that take an active role in online communication, specifically social media, have an obligation to be open with their virtual stakeholders (Kelleher, 2009), and as the boundaries between institutional and interpersonal communication blur with social media the need for the revelation of identity by organizational representatives becomes increasingly important (Kelleher & Miller, 2006).

Despite the growing recognition of disclosure of personal identities online as being critical for public relations success, it has not been a mainstay of openness discussions in the realm of public relations. Instead, scholarship has focused on the provision of information at the organizational-level. Relationship management scholars have advocated that openness was an important facet of continued relationship growth. However, the conceptual definition of openness focused on an organization’s willingness to communicate and answer stakeholders’ questions (Hon & Grunig, 1999). It did not focus on any disclosure at the individual employee-level. Similarly, openness is a fundamental component of one of Kelly’s (2001) four stewardship strategies, specifically reporting, which consists of providing full information about decisions and actions taken by an organization to stakeholders who are affected by those actions, is a fundamental behavior for ongoing relationship cultivation. Ledingham and Bruning (1998) stress that openness—disclosing organizational actions and being willing to discuss these actions with stakeholders—demonstrates a commitment to the publics. Indeed, engaging in direct conversations prompted by stakeholders concerns and questions reflects the principles of the Excellence Theory; however, it is not the full scope of openness and disclosure.

Following scandals that plagued the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, stakeholders demanded greater transparency from organizations at the same time as social media first began appearing (Bernardi & LaCross, 2005). In regard to their online communication practices, organizations seemed to respond by providing more one-way messages in corporate (Ki & Hon, 2006), nonprofit (Waters, 2007), and government (Bonsón, et al. 2012) institutions. Previous public relations scholarship has narrowly defined and discussed openness and disclosure in relation to organizational-level behaviors, and early studies of social media performance continued this narrative by examining these constructs in relation to an organization’s willingness to discuss institutional dimensions outside the realm of publicity and promotion, providing information about the history and vision of the institution, and enabling the public to reach out with questions or comments by providing minimal response mechanisms online (e.g., generic email addresses, feedback forms).

Despite this narrow view of openness and disclosure, public relations scholars have stressed the power of the individual in the practice of public relations for some time. Before social media became such a major focus of public relations, Toth (2000) stressed that long-term success in public relations requires a focus on interpersonal relationships and the openness and transparency needed for such interactions. As the practice of public relations continues to experiment with social media campaigns and programming, it is becoming increasingly clear that openness and disclosure not only focus on organization-level actions but also that of individuals representing the institutions. Sweetser (2010) argues that the disclosure of personal identity in social media is key to organizational successes in social media. The nature of social media lends itself to conversations demonstrating a human tone and feeling. Insincere and cold organizational replies are easily detected in an environment that embraces genuine conversation. As such, it is as important to disclose who is representing the institution online because social media platforms reinforce the interpersonal nature of social networking (Rybalko & Seltzer, 2010).

Given the expanding nature of openness and disclosure in relation to the practice of online public relations, the current research posed three research qu...