Legal and Ethical Factors Constraining The Use Of Social Media In Business

Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are becoming a more and more used way an integral part of the way people communicate. These sites are increasingly used by members of the legal profession both in their personal and business capacities.

Current Use Of Social Media In Business Practice:

Because social media sites have been growing more and more popular, employers are taking advantage and using these sites in their hiring processes. Companies and organizations looking to hire applicants have seen an increasing value in utilizing social media to check the background of individuals.

A 2008 survey of US Human Resources departments found 84% of employers utilized online search engines to find applicants, an increase from 77% back in 2006

There is no law in place that restricts employers from considering information on an individual's social network profiles when making a recruitment decision.

Legal:
There is a large concern of people who believe that employers may not hire someone due to their physical appearance (race etc.) or beliefs from information they find on social media websites. This is argued that the employers can breach the Sex Discrimination act without being actually caught for it.

Ethical:
Through public profiles, employers may see protected class information or sensitive and private activities that are not job-relevant but that may influence the employer's view of a candidate, which brings in both legal and ethical questions

Dangers Of Social Media

In this blog I will discuss the Dangers of Social Media

Oversharing:
The thing with people in social media is that people like to share what they do, sometimes they can overshare. This could lead to problems such as a robbery from a property of yours or even cases of social engineering.

Cyber bullying:
One of the most common threats to people in social media. Cyber Bullying is the act of bullying someone online rather than in person. The victims tend to be children, teenagers and young adults. This can involve something such as a hateful comment or message sent to someone. The easiest way to avoid this is for the victim to simply block the bully on all social media platforms. At the same time it is still bullying and also a criminal offense.

Grooming:
Grooming is a large problem in social media as it is used to stalk vulnerable young victims. The groomers often use fake profiles to befriend the children and arrange a meet up with them. This is a very illegal act and is a long-term jailable offense.

Hacking:
If someone is somehow able to hack one of your social media accounts, they are able to use all of your personal information that you have already provided to the site. This can be used as a form of identity theft/fraud.

Characteristics of Social Media

This blog input will talk about the characteristics of social media.

Web Address
Firstly, a social media site will give the user their own web address, an ID that is used to locate the user's page. This is good for people looking for social presence whether it be a band, a business or even just someone looking for publicity.

Web Space
The social media provider will often provide the user with the ability to save and share content such as media, blogs etc with other users.

Connecting With People and Friends
This is one of the key points of social media, actually being able to be social. Many social media platforms allow people to use instant messaging services, "tag" friends in media, play games and more.

Creating Your Profiles To Your Own Preference
In most social media websites you have the ability to build and create your own profile from scratch, although the users can only work with what the social media provider allows.

Concepts of social presence, social capital, social production and social intelligence

Concepts of social presence, social capital, social production and social intelligence

Social Presence:

Social Presence is simply a way to look at the awareness of someone on Social Media. It is what many people and businesses use to get their name out there.
Companies can hire any local social media presence or marketing agency to create a complete plan for their social media presence.
 

Social Capital:

Social Capital is the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively.

The term can refer to:

1. Resources e.g. How many people/which people, spaces they have available to use. 2. The relationships between these resources 3. The way the relationships actually work together 

Social Production:

Social Production is an international term used to convey the process and product in social media. 

Social Intelligence:

Social Intelligence is simply a rough measurement of people’s ability to get along well with others and getting them to cooperate with you whether on social media or out with it.

How enterprises can use social media to promote their products or services.

Businesses have taken to social media in hopes to promote their products and gain a wider client base. It is as close to free advertising as you can get. Whereas it’d cost a company $35,000 to get a single ad on a prime time slot a company could instead offer to give away a $15,000 car to a lucky winner. They still reach similar amount of eyes but they’ve fractionalised the cost. Sponsoring social media personalities is yet another effective way of building an audience, this is most noticeable in “YouTube” where people can have huge amounts of people following them and their content/opinions.

Having a social media prescience can help many smaller businesses with specialised products like customised clothing or specific art supplies. Similarly small businesses can use the location serviced often built into social media sites to bring in customers from the area like cafes and restaurants. 

The Unique Characteristics of Social Media Sites.

From the get go one will notice that many different social media sites exist and they all operate differently. Some are used for Microblogging (posting a sentence or two a time) or some are just like a chatroom. We shall look at the differences between sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest.

Facebook

Facebook is a social media site. Users have to register a profile either using their own name or some kind of persona they’ve invented. Up registering users can seek out friends either by contacting them in real life and asking them to add them as a friends or just track them down on the site (fun fact! If you’re looking for someone called John Smith there is no doubt thousands of them existing on the site, so if you type John Smith Ayr (or wherever he comes from) you can likely find him a lot easier! Another feature of facebook is that there can be pages for things like Games or TV shows, these pages (if they are owned officially) can be good ways to gain reliable information about your hobbies.

Twitter

Twitter is a “Microblogging” social media site where users are limited to only 140 characters per post. Twitter is currently in the top 3 social media sites in the world. Mostly used by people wishing for a less serious form of communication users often follow a few of their favourite celebrities and a few other friends if they happen to use the site. Users can “Retweet” posts they find funny or just to show off the statement. Twitter also used Hashtags which cause interaction between the websites vast community. People could state something like “I watched the match last night, wow #football” and whoever searched the hashtag #football would theoretically be able to see the post.

Tumblr

Tumblr, like Twitter, is a Microblogging site but it doesn’t have the same restrictions as Twitter, users can post much more than 140 characters. Users have a dashboard where they can view posts from blogs they follow. Running a blog on the site can be beneficial with bloggers being able to queue posts and earn money from advertising should they become so popular. 

Evolution of Social Media

Social Media has become a normal part of peoples lives daily now, but this has been evolving since early stages in the late 1970s from the original days of newsgroups, listservs and the first chatrooms. Social media has changed the way we interact and even the way we live to a certain degree.

From the Primitive Era of Social Media came the Medieval Era(1988 – 1999) of Social Media where more people joined in the fun of it. More and more ideas got brought in at this point including the first “create program” and “add friends” ideas.

After these came the most impressive development stage of Social Media: the Golden Age of Social Media(2001 – Present) in the past 15 years technology has rapidly developed from Blogs, to Friend meeting sites, to video uploading/viewing websites literally billions of people use these sites every second. With the internet reaching its Third BILLION user in 2014 there is no wonder people are inspired to create new and amazing social media websites and applications.

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Jamie McJannet