What you say and do on social media can affect your employment; It can keep you from getting hired, stunt your career progress and even get you fired. Is this fair – or a breach of privacy?
Our most recent research involved a study of 312 news articles about people who were fired because of social media posts.
These include stories about posts that people made themselves, such as a teacher who was fired after coming across as bisexual on Instagram, or a retail employee who left a racist post on Facebook. .
It also includes stories about posts made by others, such as videos involving racial profiling of police (which led to their dismissal).
Racism was the most common reason people were fired in these news stories, with 28% of the stories specifically related to racism. Other forms of discriminatory behavior were sometimes involved, such as queerphobia and misogyny (7%); workplace conflict (17%); Offensive content such as “bad jokes” and insensitive posts (16%); acts of violence and abuse (8%); and “political content” (5%).
We found these news stories focused on people being fired from public-facing jobs with a high degree of responsibility and scrutiny. These included police/law enforcement (20%), teachers (8%), media workers (8%), medical professionals (7%), and government employees (3%), as well as hospitality and retail (13%).
Social media is a double-edged sword. It can be used to hold people accountable for discriminatory thoughts, comments or actions. But our study also raised important questions about privacy, general human resource practices, and how employers use social media to make decisions about their employees.
Young people in particular are expected to navigate the use of social media (documenting their lives, hanging out with friends, and engaging in self-expression), which is at risk of future reputation damage.
Read more: Docking, swatting and new trends in online harassment
Are all online posts fair game?
Many people believe that people just need to accept the reality that what you say and do on social media can be used against you.
And that person should only post content that they won’t mind their boss (or potential boss) seeing.
But to what extent should employers and hiring managers respect employee privacy and not use personal social media to make employment decisions?
Or is everything “fair game” in making hiring and firing decisions?
On the one hand, the ability of some people (such as police and politicians) to use social media to get what they say and do can be of immense value to democracy and society.
Powerful social movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter used social media to structural social problems and call out individual bad actors.
On the other hand, when everyday people lose their jobs (or aren’t hired in the first place) because they’re LGBTQ+, post a photo of themselves in a bikini, or because they complain about customers in private places (All stories from our study), the boundary between professional and personal life is blurred.
Mobile phones, email, working from home, the highly competitive job market, and combining “work” with “identity” all serve to blur this line.
Some workers must develop their own strategies and tactics, such as not befriending or following workers on certain social media (which in itself can create tension).
And even when one derives pleasure and fulfillment from work, we should expect to respect certain boundaries.
Employers, HR employees and managers should think carefully about the boundaries between professional and personal life; Using social media in employment decisions can be more complicated than it sounds.
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A ‘hidden course of surveillance’
When people feel monitored by employers (present, or imagined future) when using social media, it creates “a hidden course of surveillance”. Especially for young people, it can be harmful and inhibiting.
This hidden course of surveillance serves to produce obedient, self-governing civilian-staff. They are often prompted on social media to curate highly sterile representations of their lives, always in danger of employment destruction.
At the same time, it is these social media that have a clear and productive role to play in exposing violations of power. Bad behavior, misogyny, racism, misogyny, homosexuality, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry, harassment and violence have all been exposed by social media.
So, again, this surveillance can be both bad and good – in some cases and for some people (especially young people whose digitally mediated lives are managed through this prism of future influence) but justice , may also be meant to liberate and enable accountability and transparency. In other scenarios and for other actors.
Social media can be an effective way for people to find work, for employers to find employees, professional profiles on sites like LinkedIn, or portfolios of work on platforms like Instagram, but they can also be personal spaces, even if They are not set to private.
How to strike a balance between keeping people accountable using social media versus risking invading people’s privacy depends on the context, and is ultimately about power.
Read more: As the use of digital platforms increases, we will need stronger global efforts to protect human rights online
