Should employees be “dooced” for a social media post? The role of social media marketing governance

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.05.027Get rights and content

Abstract

Instances of employees being ‘dooced’ because of a social media post are becoming commonplace. Three research questions are presented to better understand workplace firings due to social media posts using justice theory and social convergence to fit within the nomological net. The first question examines employees' awareness of their employer's social media policy. The second question examines the role of offensiveness in the perceived fairness of the termination. The third question asks whether work-related posts (social convergence) and the presence of a social media policy (social media governance) influence the perception of termination fairness. Two data collection efforts are presented to test the research questions. The research findings extend the social media marketing governance literature by incorporating role theory and script theory. Managerial implications include the importance of developing and communicating to employees the organization's social media policies.

Introduction

According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center (2018), it is estimated that 69% of adults in the United States (U.S.) participate in social media. Social media is defined as Internet-based technologies that allow the creation, sharing, and exchange of user-generated content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

Sometimes, a social media post may result in unintended negative consequences such as involuntary termination. An employee's involuntary termination due to posting on social media is referred to as the employee being ‘dooced’ (Cote, 2007; Dennis, 2011). Heather Armstrong, a blogger who started dooce.com, was the first employee known to be fired after writing satirical statements and stories about her work and co-workers on her blog (Waters, 2005). Dooced is now commonly used to refer to someone who was terminated for posting a message, picture, or video on social media or as comments to other users' posts (Cortini & Fantinelli, 2018). Despite the increasing occurrence of employees being dooced, a recent study by the Pew Research Center shows only 32% of employees are aware their employer's have social media policies pertaining to personal social media use (Olmstead, Lampe, & Ellison, 2016).

Additionally, dooced employees frequently bring unwanted negative attention to both the company and themselves. As some of these posts go viral, other social media users engage in debates over whether the employee should be fired. Groups of social media users have demanded the firing of an employee, started boycotts of the brand, and have even made threats against the company. This online phenomenon has been labeled a Collaborative Brand Attack (CBA) and refers to “such joint, event-induced, dynamic, and public offenses from a large number of Internet users via social media platforms on a brand that are aimed to harm it and/or to force it to change its behavior” (Rauschnabel, Kammerlander, & Ivens, 2016, p. 381). A journalist, John Ronson, noticed the number of news stories about people who were dooced and wrote a book on how to recover from social media shaming (Ronson, 2015).

Recognizing that the body of literature on social media management was somewhat disjointed, Felix, Rauschnabel, and Hinsch (2017) developed a framework for strategic social media marketing based on four elements: scope, culture, structure, and governance. Dooced employees fall within the social media governance element through social media policies and are the focus of this research. To date, most of the academic literature on employees being dooced has focused on its legal aspects (Cote, 2007; Dennis, 2011; Mercado-Kierkegaard, 2006). The current literature related to employee social media use is limited and mostly exploratory; thus, further research is necessary.

This research begins with a preliminary investigation of the Fortune 500 companies' social media policies that were publicly available. This investigation guided the first research question which examines employees' knowledge of their employers' social media policies and is addressed in Study 1. Study 1 also addresses the second research question by using four real-life scenarios to determine whether perceptions of termination fairness and obligation to retain are influenced by the perceived offensiveness level of the social media post. For research question three, Study 2 utilizes a 2 × 2 online experiment to examine perceptions of termination fairness depending on whether an employee's personal social media post is about the workplace or not (social convergence) and whether employees are provided with a formal social media policy (social media governance). We extend the holistic strategic social media marketing framework developed by Felix et al. (2017) by incorporating role theory and script theory to support the importance of implementing and effectively communicating a social media marketing governance plan. The research concludes with theoretical and managerial implications as well as suggestions for future research.

Section snippets

Social convergence

Individuals use social media for self-expression about their opinions, ideas, personal branding, and matters concerning their daily lives, such as their employment. Boyd (2008, p. 18) states “that social convergence occurs when disparate social contexts are collapsed into one” and “social convergence requires people to handle disparate audiences simultaneously without a social script.” Thus, for social media use, social convergence erupts when individuals add co-workers, subordinates, and

Research questions

A preliminary investigation provided guidance for Study 1 by examining the social media policies of the Fortune 500 companies that were publicly available resulting in Research Question One (RQ1) which asks, “to what extent are employees aware of their employer's social media policies and its' specific elements?” Research Question 2 (RQ2) asks, “when a person is fired for a personal social media post, does society consider the offensiveness of the post when deciding if the termination is fair

Preliminary investigation

A preliminary investigation provided guidance for the research questions by examining the 2017 Fortune 500 companies' social media policies to identify common elements. The unit of analysis is the information provided in the social media policies. This information was obtained by searching for “social media policy” on each company's website or the Internet with the company's name and the phrase “social media policy.” This process resulted in 185 of the companies' social media policies being

Theoretical contributions

This research extends the social media marketing governance literature by incorporating role theory and script theory (Solomon et al., 1985); thus, illustrating the importance of having clearly outlined social media policies so that employees understand that whether they are on personal time or at work, their use of social media can impact their employment status. This paper also extends justice theory in two ways. Previous research has utilized justice theory to apply to outsiders with a

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a grant from James Madison University. The authors would like to thank William T. Faranda for his review of our manuscript and thoughtful comments and edits. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers.

Janna M. Parker is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at James Madison University. She received her DBA in Marketing from Louisiana Tech University. Her research interests include social media, retailing, nostalgia, and integrated communications.

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    Janna M. Parker is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at James Madison University. She received her DBA in Marketing from Louisiana Tech University. Her research interests include social media, retailing, nostalgia, and integrated communications.

    Shelly Marasi is an Assistant Professor of Management at Tennessee Technological University. She received her DBA in Management from Louisiana Tech University. Her research interests include social media, employee deviance, faculty satisfaction, and research methods.

    Kevin W. James is an Assistant Professor of Marketing The University of Texas at Tyler. He received his DBA in Marketing from Louisiana Tech University. His research interests include social media, customer satisfaction, and hedonic and utilitarian value.

    Alison Wall is an Assistant Professor of Management at Southern Connecticut State University. She received her DBA in Management from Louisiana Tech University. Her research interests include social media, employee deviance, and research methods.

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