Social Media Ethics Made Easy

Joseph W. Barnes

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781606498538
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

Social Media Ethics Made Easy takes an in-depth look at the risks of social, digital and mobile media marketing without structured policies. Readers will learn what is at stake from the law to their reputation, and what happens if businesses and/or individuals do not disclose relationships or comply with (FTC) Federal Trade Commission regulations. Readers will come to understand what they should do, why, and how they should do it. The issues in this book affect every single business from for-profits, to nonprofits, to government and educational institutions. It also addresses the impact on every single social/digital media participant and why they must learn about these guidelines so they can protect their own personal brand. This book is intended for a broad audience including students and professors in both undergrad and graduate schools, and practicing business executives. The goal is to inform management practice and help current and future business leaders navigate through the ethical laws and compliance issues affecting social, digital and mobile media.

CHAPTER 1

The Social, Digital, and Mobile Landscape

Let’s Look at the Social/Digital Landscape

Why is this topic important? Because billions of people use social/digital media each day. This is how we communicate, share, review, and vent. It is now the digital fabric of our lives.

To fully understand and appreciate social/digital media, we need to understand how prevalent it has become and who is using the platforms.

Worldwide, there are over two billion people who use social media.

According to the PEW Internet Research Project, 76 percent of online adults use social networking sites (PewResearchCenter 2015).

The PEW data also shows, “The growing ubiquity of cell phones, especially the rise of smartphones, has made social networking just a finger tap away. Fully 40 percent of cell phone owners use a social networking site on their phone, and 28 percent do so on a typical day.” (PewResearchCenter 2014)

Have you found yourself connected to your smartphone from morning until night? You are not alone.

According to the U.S. Commerce department, “Eighty-eight percent of Americans ages 25 and older used mobile phones. Mobile Internet usage has grown substantially across demographic categories.” (U.S. Department of Commerce and NTIA 2014)

Users include readers and viewers, curators of content, news sources, politicians, almost every major company in America, nonprofits, and educational institutions. Ages range from the very young to a 114-year-old woman who has to lie about age to join Facebook. (Shah 2014)

As we look at the different platforms, Facebook is still the most dominant in the social media space, despite all the other platforms that have surfaced.

According to BusinessInsider.com (Guimarães 2014),

• Facebook skews significantly female. Women in the United States are more likely to use Facebook than men by about 10 percentage points, according to a 2013 survey of social network adoption.

• Facebook remains the top social network for U.S. teens. Nearly half of teen Facebook users say they are using the site more, and Facebook has more daily teen users than any other social network.

• Instagram has edged out Facebook and Twitter in terms of prestige among young users. U.S. teens now describe Instagram as “most important,” while Facebook and Twitter lost ground on this measure, according to Piper Jaffray’s twice yearly teen survey. The survey also found that 83 percent of U.S. teens in wealthy households were on Instagram.

• LinkedIn is actually more popular than Twitter among U.S. adults. LinkedIn’s core demographic are those aged between 30 and 49, that is those in the prime of their career-rising years. Not surprisingly, LinkedIn also has a pronounced skew toward well-educated users.

• Twitter has begun to lean toward male users, whereas previously it was a more gender-balanced social network. Pew found that 22 percent of men use Twitter, while only 15 percent of women tweet.

• YouTube reaches more adults aged 18 to 34 than any single cable TV network. Nearly half of people in this age group visited YouTube between December 2013 and February 2014, according to Nielsen. It was rated by Millennials as the top place to watch content, ahead of digital and TV properties like Facebook and ESPN.

• Snapchat is the youngest social network of all. More than 6 out of 10 Snapchat users are in the 18-to-24 age group, compared to 28 percent of Instagram users, according to a survey by Informate.

(Information above from Guimarães 2014)

The use of social media goes far beyond the facts and figures. Social media is the fabric of society because it allows us to share and create community. Whether we are sharing events and moments of pride on Facebook, fast-moving developments on Twitter, “how to” videos on YouTube, online reviews, or simply fun (or sometimes embarrassing) moments on other platforms, social media has become intertwined with our lives. Today, we now carry the Internet in our pockets or purses 24/7. Social media is how we listen and share, in our personal lives and in business.

We can examine this trend from a variety of vantage points including sociology, psychology, technology, and interpersonal communications. We can seek to analyze the trends to death, but that is not what this book is about. It is about how we use, and misuse, the digital landscape, how to understand the ethical standards that should be in place when using social media, and how to create a social media policy.

Technology has opened the door for sharing like never before. Instead of sharing an experience you have had with your friends, you can now share it with hundreds of friends and followers who can share it with their friends and followers. If it’s big enough, it will spread like a wildfire and become viral, which can be good or bad, depending upon the content and the impact.

It’s important to understand the speed at which information flows today. We now live in a 24/7 real-time world. We can buy almost anything we want at any hour of the day or night online. Likewise, we can share whatever we want 24/7.

For businesses used to operating in traditional ways, today’s digital landscape can be frightening. For businesses that get it, the digital landscape presents untapped opportunities.

Consumer anger can travel at digital light speed. This quantum development means that angry consumers now vent in real time instead of writing letters or calling businesses to complain. Instead of only telling a few people about a negative experience, even the shyest person on earth with a computer and hundreds of followers can do damage to a business.

This is only the beginning. Social and digital media are still in their infancy. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the first online shopping sites widely appeared.

Just for grins, there’s a now famous Newsweek article from the mid-1990s headlined as follows:

The Internet? Bah! Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana”

Today, hardly a night goes by without the major news networks citing content from social media sources.

At the same time, a report released from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) found, “Americans are rapidly embracing mobile Internet devices such as smart phones and tablet computers for a wide range of activities beyond just voice communications, such as checking email and using social networks.” (U.S. Department of Commerce and NTIA 2014)

Apps Rule

How many apps are on your smartphone? I have over 20 that provide calendar, news, weather, and shopping shortcuts.

“Apps today are driving the majority of media consumption activity, now accounting for 7 out of every 8 minutes of media consumption on mobile devices. On smartphones, app activity is even higher, at 88-percent usage versus 82-percent on tablets. More than half (57-percent) use apps every single day, while 26-percent of tablet owners do. And 79 percent of smartphone owners use apps nearly every day, saying they use them at least 26 days per month, versus 52-percent for tablet users.” (Perez 2014)

Digital Consumers

These digital devices and easy access have changed our lives and our behavior.

According to the A.C. Nielsen Company, “Americans now own four digital devices on average, and the average U.S. consumer spends 60 hours a week consuming content across devices. And a majority of U.S. households now own high-definition televisions (HDTVs), Internet-connected computers and smartphones. In addition to more devices, consumers also have more choices for how and when they access content. As a result, consumption habits are changing. The rapid adoption of a second screen has transformed the traditional TV viewing experience, with consumers using smartphones and tablets in ways that are natural extensions of the programming they watch. And social media usage is now standard practice in our daily lives—almost half (47 percent) of smartphone owners visit social networks every day.” (nielsen.com 2014a)

Hispanics are Ahead of the Digital Curve

In the social/digital space, there are some cultural differences. “Hispanic consumers have rapidly adopted multiple-screens into their daily video viewing routines and represent 47 million traditional TV viewers in the U.S. and growing. Latinos adopt smartphones at a higher rate than any other demographic group and watch more hours of videos online and on their mobile phones than the average American.” (nielsen.com 2014a)

Tablets, Airplanes, and Cars!

As you read this, new innovations in tablets are being developed each week, more airlines are outfitting planes for Wi-Fi, and cars are now being sold with Internet access.

It would have been crazy to think of cars with Internet access just a few years ago, but now, the technology is here and that will affect social media.

“Cars are big business and when you consider how personal a car purchase is, new connectivity features are helping automakers personalize content for everyone, from working moms in need of hands-free talk to twenty-something singles looking to score reservations at the local hotspot.” (nielsen.com 2014b)

“The modern car offers some form of connectivity for everyone—and that appeal is growing. In fact, of the 44-percent of future auto intenders who plan to purchase a new car within the next two years, 39-percent are very likely to purchase a connected car with built-in features. The rise in connectivity options—whether for getting directions or checking engine diagnostics—also presents a unique opportunity for advertisers and marketers to reach consumers in the comfort of their own cockpits.” (nielsen.com 2014b)

Mobile Payments

What are we talking about now? Mobile payments, of course. In 2014, Apple announced Apple Pay, its new mobile payments system.

The worldwide mobile payment revenue in 2015 was 450 billion U.S. dollars and is expected to surpass 1 trillion U.S. dollars in 2019. (Statistica 2016)

MasterCard and PRIME Research released a study, which tracked more than 13 million social media comments across Twitter, Facebook, online blogs, and forums around the world. The study shows improved sentiment toward mobile payments and rapid growth in consumer use and merchant acceptance. While security concerns around mobile payments still exist, the study demonstrates that consumers and merchants have moved from “why use mobile payments?” to “which mobile payment option should be used?” (newsroom.mastercard.com 2014)

What does this mean? According to Ritesh Gupta in transactionworld.net, “One can look forward to a seamless environment where consumers can also perform transactions in addition to their daily social conversation.” (transactionworld.net 2014)

Eran Savir, CEO/cofounder, SeatID, a social seating and booking platform that adds social widgets and data to ticketing and booking websites and apps says, “Socializing is a key element in the decision-making process in every aspect of our lives. A rapidly increasing number of people share and socialize online as part of a cognitive process that helps them make up their minds in regard to what products to buy, which hotels to book, how to travel, etc.” (transactionworld.net 2014)

“Business owners understand that their users are social animals, that these people ask their friends for recommendations on Facebook, that they want to know where their peers are going,” Savir added. “Business proprietors understand that it is to their definite advantage to encourage potential customers to bring social experience to their online purchasing processes. Though it’s not yet a mature concept, I have no doubt that in five years from now, social proofing is going to be broadly implemented.” (transactionworld.net 2014)

Social TV

This is one of the latest technological advances that facilitates social media ...