People are using blogs all around the world to share their views,
opinions, ideas and stories over the Internet. Blogging has
created a new era of having your voice ‘be heard’ through the ‘blogosphere’.
It’s a portal to vent your emotions, share ideas and thoughts and connect with
others that interest, share the same ideas and are in the same situation as you.
The Workplace has become a common area for people to vent and express
their opinions about their current workplace and colleagues.
Richards and
Kosmala’s reading on work and employee blogging, gave me an understanding and
the realisation that there are positives and negatives of owning and publishing
a blog.
Sharing our ideas through the Internet
Ellis and Richards (2009)
“found employees to be attracted to blogging about work because these online
forums offers a form of voice other than that provided by trade unions.” People
can hide away behind their computers and say what they want to say through an
online medium (Ellis & Richards, 2009).
The blogosphere is an
online culture where people can read, search information through tags, connect
with comments, instantly entering the online world with the quick click of the
‘post’ button. This YouTube video shows how people use blogs, what type of
blogs there are and how simple it is to connect to the online world.
However, there is a
downside to having your freedom of speech through the Internet. Once
information is posted then it is available to anyone and everyone that is wanting
to read your blog. Workplace blogging is at risk because it could lead to major
implications such as defamation.
There is a fine line
between sharing your thoughts and ideas on the blogosphere as this could offend
or defame someone or an organisation, which has terrible implications for the
blogger and the organisation.
Be careful of defamation
Drawing ideas from this weeks reading Richards and Kosmala (2013) which
looks at employee cynicism focusing on “the narrative of work blogs…to suggest
that being cynical about work can also give an employee a sense of control and
attachment to their own occupational or professional community” (Richards &
Kosmala, 2013), this cynicism being expressed through the form of blogs.
This reading looks at how employees have taken up the “blogging
phenomenon as a space that has become increasingly associated with employees
expressing a wide range of views and opinions related to corporate culture and
initiatives” (Richards & Kosmala, 2013).
This type of work blogging however can be seen as frowned upon with
studies suggesting that “work blogging should be viewed as an expanding forum
for self-organised employee resistance and misbehavior, rejection a reductive view of blogging platforms
as forums for 'Cyber-waffle'" (Keen, 2007).
The use of social media is
for people to be able to communicate on an online platform with accessibility
through many different portable devices. Blogging is a form of an online diary,
this being no different to a diary in book form but only now it is available to
be viewed on the Internet, with everyone’s eyes all around the world having the
ability to view this ‘online diary’ 24/7.
Blogging
When these online blogs are published on the Internet and contain deceitful information this is when the damage can be done. Defamation is a growing concern within the online environment through not only social media but the concern lays with anything that is published on the web.
Not only can this affect the reputation of an individual or a company
but it can attract unwanted media attention that could potentially be even more
threatening to the reputation of the company or the individual/s involved.
For a company this media attention could be the best thing with a reference
of their business through a blog that comments on its positive services and
products or it could be damaging through online discussion about their negative
practices.
Not only do blogs give freedom of speech but they also have the
potential to attract media attention which “given to work blogs has led to
intense online discussions about the defence of employee rights” (Schoneboom,
2011).
But, What can be done about employee's blogging defamatory comments about an individual or organisation?.
Guidelines can help assist a company on the rules to their employees
about the dangers of social media. This YouTube video discusses the idea of how
companies should consider establishing clear guidelines when it comes to their
internal employees using blogging and social media. Social media can be a great
source of promotion and advertising for a company if it is use effectively and
ethically.
Blogging and social media are so widely used these days that it is
impossible to avoid being pulled into the social media frenzy.
Micro-blogging
websites such as Twitter have allowed people to be able to communicate in a
smaller blogging environment. Twitter runs on the theory that people post
‘tweets’ which are micro blogs that make up to 140 characters and can be posted
whenever the persons desires.
Nielson states that “Twitter users send
400million tweets each day”. With twitter being available on every online
platform as an application on iPads, iPhones, laptops and other mobile devices
means that employees can use micro-blogging sites to be able to ‘update’ what
they are doing and discuss anything they would like over this social media
site.
Much like normal blogs, twitter also works on the theory of hash tagging
which means that anyone can be associated with a word that they hash tag. This can be a growing concern for a business if
employees use this micro-blogging medium as a form of venting about an
organisation or an individual as hash tagging can link to the organisation or
the person being involved.
It has proven in recent media events that the issue with social media
can draw unwanted attention to the individual or an organisation involved.
Celebrities are always being brought into the spotlight through social media, this
could be for a positive reason and mainly always for a negative.
Miley Cyrus Twitter tweet
American Actress and Singer
Miley Cyrus, is an example how the pop princess has relied on social media to
create an image within society that she is not a ‘little girl anymore’ and that
her stage name ‘Hannah Montanna’ is in the past. Cyrus used Twitter to
track her transformation of her new image through micro-blogging by taking
photos of her hair being shaved off, then dyed and a new clothing style, All uploaded
to Twitter for her followers to be able to follow.
But has the pressure from
the music industry and social media for celebrities and people constantly in
the spotlight affecting their social well-being to transform into something
they do not need to be?.
With all the sager of Miley being caught up in social media showdowns with other famous celebrities, what does this mean for Disney? Who was the sole company that started Miley Cyrus within the Hannah Montanna franchise.
As online prosumers we are responsible
for what we create and upload on the Internet so once something has been posted
there is generally no way we can turn back. We created this content for the
world to consume and its our responsibility that we make sure that is
appropriate for people to see. Social media is so globalised these days
that we heavily rely on it as a source of information, forgetting that everyone
is able to view the content we upload.
People use social media such as Twitter and traditional blogging sites as a way to avoid the real world and confronting daily challenges that arise. For some being behind a computer screen is a much more safe place to discuss issues over a blog than confrontation.
References:
Ellis, V. and J. Richards (2009), ‘Creativity, Connecting
and Correcting: Motivations and Meanings
of Work-Blogging among Public Service Workers’, in S.
Bolton and M. Houlihan (eds), Work Matters: Reflections on Contemporary Work
(London: Palgrave), pp. 250–268.
Schoneboom, A. (2007), ‘Diary of a Working Boy:
Creative Resistance among Anonymous Workbloggers’,
Ethnography 8, 4, 403–423.
Schoneboom, A. (2011a), ‘Sleeping Giants? Fired
Workbloggers and Labour Organisation’, New
Technology, Work and Employment 26, 1, 17–28.
Richards, J. & Kosmala,
K., 2013 'In the end, you can only slag people off for so long: employee
cynicism through work blogging', New Technology, Work and Employment.
vol.28, no.1, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp.68-77.
Keen, A. 2007, 'The Cult
of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our
Economy'.
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(Google Images)
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2013/using-big-data-to-engage-with-the-new-consumer.html
<Accessed October 3, 2013>.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwcW5AKcfl4
- ‘What is blogging?’, 2012.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=747PGdPu3ZU,
' Employee Blogging Policy and Employee Social Networking Pol, YouTube, 2010.
