News outlets
worried about employees' use of Facebook, Twitter
Create separate guidelines for staff
on use of Facebook, Twitter
Big news organisations who first
embraced social media use at workplace are now seeing more risks than benefits
in employees' use of Facebook and Twitter, reveals an interesting study.
Realising the risks of social media,
major news organisations have created guidelines for employees on how to use
these outlets, separate from the companies' existing codes of conduct.
Jayeon Lee, assistant professor of
journalism at Pennsylvania-based Lehigh University, found that news
organisations are more concerned about the current social media environment
than excited about it at least when it comes to their employees.
“I was wondering what approaches news
organisations take when it comes to their own employees' social media
uses," Lee said.
“In particular, knowing both positive
and negative implications of journalists' social media uses, I wanted to see if
their guidelines were dominantly positive, negative, or neutral in their
framing of the implications,” she added.
Overall, Lee found that the guidelines
focus primarily on the risks and challenges presented by the use of social
media rather than the opportunities and advantages for media.
"As some media critics point out,
overreaching rules can stifle creativity and morale and even discourage overall
social media use itself," she explained in a paper set to be published in
the journal The Communication Review.
The study looked at eight US news
organisations - The New York Times, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, Los
Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, and NPR - and
three British news outlets - BBC, The Times and The Daily Telegraph.
According to the findings, news
organisations are most concerned about: accuracy, breaking objectivity,
inappropriate online behaviours and harming their principles and credibility.
Accuracy - sourcing or redistributing
false information from social media without sufficient fact verification - was
the most frequently raised topic and accounted for 17.8% of the total sentences
studied.
“The results show that the
prevention-focused approach is more common than I would have predicted,"
Lee said.
"Although I expected that the
guidelines would include various warnings related to risky social media
activities, I was surprised to find little comment about how to use social
media wisely or effectively to derive full benefit from it,” she commented.
Lee recognised that news organizations
are actively utilizing various social media to reach a wider audience and build
brand loyalty.
“However, it seems they are keen on
keeping their own employees from actively engaging in social media,” she added.
Source |
Business Line | 14 July 2016
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Pralhad Jadhav
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Khaitan & Co
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