Business Ethics and Media
Business Ethics and Media: The web, in its current form, is neither static nor stable. It’s changing. And as technology does, the moral opportunities and problems change as well. The first generation web, often known as the dot com era web or web 1.0, saw a significant shift in business communication technology but not changed the game’s fundamental principles.
The most current version of the web, on the other hand, exemplifies the polar differences. Web 2.0 (a concept invented by Tim O’Reilly) is a shift in how current technologies are utilised rather than a new technology. And, particularly in the realm of social media, these new implementations pose some distinct difficulties to corporate ethics.
Business Ethics and Media
Community (and not content) is king
The name of the game on the first generation web was content. In fact, “content is king” was the Internet’s credo throughout the dot-com era. During this time, the objective of web-savvy companies was to create distinctive content that would catch people’s attention and link them to their brand, whether it was a product, a service, or both. During this time, the principal ethical concerns were the usual concerns of PR departments: honest communication, public relations spin, and brand integrity.
In the web 2.0 realm of social media, community reigns supreme above content. The major goal here is not successful message delivery, as in an email blast, but the establishment and preservation of communities of mutual interest, as with Facebook. This shift in viewpoint not only changes the landscape of corporate communications, but it also gives firms a new set of obligations.
In reality, one of the most serious ethical issues arises when businesses attempt to govern and control the social environment. Jim and Laura, two retirees, took an RV road trip across America in 2006, stopping at Wal-Mart Stores along the route to write about their excellent experiences with the company and its workers.
When BusinessWeek learned that the journey was indirectly financed and supported by Wal-mart via the operations of its PR firm, Edelman, their blog, Wal-Marting Across America, came under fire. The Federal Trade Commission has changed its endorsement and testimonial criteria to reflect the potential and problems of social media in reaction to this kind of behind-the-scenes manipulation. Corporations, like everyone else, must learn how to build friends; they cannot fake it.
Prosumers have a lot of power.
Web 2.0 confuses the responsibilities of the participants in these connections, despite the fact that social media is all about relationships. Things were plainly recognisable and repaired throughout the web 1.0 era. There were both producers and consumers. For a producer, capturing eyes and converting watchers of material into paying clients was the name of the game.
Top-down information flowed from a few producers to a huge number of prospective customers, and consumer activity was primarily confined to making or not making a purchase. Despite the Internet’s new technology, the parameters of the connection and the power dynamics in that relationship remained same.
The prosumer is a new player introduced by social media. Content is no longer created by a few producers who share their material to a large audience of consumers in the web 2.0 age. Now, material is created from the ground up by prosumers, who are both consumers and providers of online data and services.
Consumers submit reviews, leave comments, and share material with their social media networks. By levelling the playing field or even overturning accepted assumptions, this action undermines established power systems. Because the threshold for social media involvement is so low, a teenager may have more Twitter followers and Facebook friends than a well-established corporate brand, and her comments can frequently have more effect and influence than a well-crafted advertising campaign.
This power transfer brings with it new problems and obligations. Nestlé was unable to manage an onslaught of bad publicity, dubbed a “anti-social media surge” by The Guardian, in February 2010. Nestlé, like many other companies, has a Facebook page where “fans” may leave comments on the company and its goods.
The page was created to harness the power of prosumers by promoting bottom-up brand involvement. However, things might sometimes swing in the other way, as was the case with Nestlé. Many “fans” of Nestlé began writing nasty comments on the company’s Facebook page in reaction to a Greenpeace campaign over the usage of palm oil. And efforts to contain the epidemic were exacerbated when the Nestlé account’s administrator attempted to retaliate in like.
Lines that are smudged
Because social media efficiently levels the playing field between people and organisations, the border between what is public and what is personal is often blurred. “While the choice to upload films, images, ideas, experiences, and observations to social networking sites is personal, a single act may have far-reaching ethical ramifications for people as well as companies,” according to a Deloitte Survey from 2009.
The main ethical difficulty for a company is deciding whether and how to deal with this material, particularly when it is disparaging of the download business or reveals personal information about workers or job seekers. Employees who publish remarks that are disparaging of their workplace or possibly humiliating to the firm, for example, may or should be disciplined by their employer.
Argos, a large UK store, dismissed an employee in 2011 after he complained about his work on Facebook. Despite the fact that the employer’s name did not appear in the article, Argos claimed that the employee’s statements were a violation of the employee’s contract and might harm the company’s image. Organizations engaged in this kind of activity have a tough job in determining appropriate levels of monitoring their employees’ personal usage of social media while still honouring their right to free speech.