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Delta Milayo Ndou #digitaldialogue
Social media conflicts tend to escalate drastically and they are extremely mercurial especially where emotive topics are central to the dispute.
Generally speaking, freedom of expression is not an absolute right for an employee. By freedom of expression I mean the liberty to express any view publicly without fear of reprisal. In the context of social media, exercising one’s freedom of expression can attract swift and harsh reprisal in the form of social media bashing via negative hashtags, memes, trolling and other forms of cyber-bullying.
For the typical employee, exercising freedom of expression on social media can have unintended consequences if the views expressed prove to be unpalatable to other users or unacceptable to one’s employers.
The “gift” of employment that the employer bestows comes with a mandatory string attached — never bring the organisation into disrepute. By signing an employment contract, an employee consents to this stipulation and their freedom to freely express themselves is constrained with regards to matters that may cause harm to their employer.
If this condition is violated, the employer has the right to withdraw the “gift” of employment and kick the employee to the kerb. Most employers spell out the strings attached by way of a code of conduct or specific clauses within the employment contract that are designed to ensure employees do not bring the company into disrepute. The social media space occupies that opaque realm between the public and private divide — where social media accounts are the personal property of the employees but reside within the public cyber-sphere.
As a result, ‘private’ views expressed on the social media accounts of employees are consumed by and in a public audience — sometimes there are professional ramifications to online conduct.
Disclosures and Disclaimers
In the age of social media, there is a blurred line between the private and the professional, the personal and the institutional in terms of how individuals self-portray and how they are perceived by other users.
For the most part, social media is considered to be an aspect of an individual’s personal rather than professional life except for instances where users choose to be identified by their various professional or institutional affiliations for purposes of branding. In many such instances, the users who disclose professional and institutional affiliations also make disclaimers to the effect that the views they express are personal and should not be construed as professional, bearing institutional weight or attributable to their employers, sponsors or other affiliates.
This is all well and fine, except sometimes people will wilfully ignore such disclaimers if their interest in you is biased to your professional rather than individual persona; if they would rather engage with you in your institutional capacity with no regard for you as a person. This type of bias occurs with political figures and other prominent persons.
Disclaimers — as far as being a preventive measure against inadvertently bringing institutions you are affiliated to into disrepute goes — are wholly inadequate in the face of an emerging trend of professional persecution. In general, disclosing and displaying your employer or affiliations is taken as an indication that you want to be identified as being linked to such and consequently, your conduct online will reflect (for better or worse) on the institutions or affiliates you choose to display. But even when you choose to not display your employer or other affiliates, people online can and do (often with malicious intent) make it their business to track your digital footprint and uncover details about you that you may not have volunteered.
Professional persecution and the rise of social media bashing
“Professional persecution” is the act of making a deliberate connection between an individual’s (presumably unpalatable) personal views expressed on social media and their employer so as to punish the individual in their professional capacity by bashing their employer.
Social media conflicts tend to escalate drastically and they are extremely mercurial especially where emotive topics are central to the dispute. Highly controversial and contentious views attract heated responses and lead to emotional triggers that may motivate users who may (wrongly or rightly) be aggrieved by said views to band together and coordinate an attack. Most coordinated social media attacks coalesce around a hashtag to feed the outrage and frenzy. This is why social media bashing tends to be a successful way of beating brands, entities and persons into submission. Where the cause is just (by whatever standard of justice you subscribe to), social media bashing can be viewed as a legitimate and reasonable response to extreme, unwarranted provocation, harm to individual or collective dignity or act of injustice.
Changa Safari Camp — a
local case in point
A recent local example of this form of mobilisation and brand bashing is an incident in which WhatsApp chats between a white woman by the name of Cally Higgins of Changa Safari Camp in Kariba and an unknown individual were leaked and sparked an outrage. In the leaked WhatsApp chats, Cally Higgins ostensibly complains that black patrons at the lodge eat too much food and even go for seconds at the buffet. Without expressly saying “black people”, Cally Higgins says “you-know-whos” and inferring from the rest of the conversation, users on Twitter concluded that she was referring to black guests at the lodge. In no time at all, hashtags such as #ChangaMustFall, #RacismMustFall and #CallyHiggins flooded the timelines of most #Twimbos (term used to refer to Zimbabweans on Twitter) as they collectively denounced Cally Higgins. Some of the outraged #Twimbos managed to track down Changa Safari Camp on Facebook and proceeded to leave comments expressing displeasure at the racist remarks made by a member of their team (Cally Higgins admitted to being involved in the camp’s catering). By elevating the remarks of the individual made in the context of an obviously private (though wholly deplorable) Whatsapp conversation and holding the institution of Changa Safari Camp fully accountable for the views of Cally Higgins — the users succeeded in professionally persecuting her.
Changa Safari Camp responded by deactivating their account on Twitter, and then reactivated it to disavow Cally Higgins and her husband in hopes of appeasing the enraged users. In the face of social media-instigated professional persecution, corporate disavowals are fast becoming the norm as employers move to protect their brands at all costs.
Corporate disavowal — a
few examples
Earlier this year, cases that hogged the limelight following social media bashing in response to racist remarks that triggered professional persecution in neighboring South Africa include: a real estate agent #PennySparrow (who referred to blacks as monkeys in a Facebook post); Nicole De Klerk (who had an altercation with black guests at a social event and referred to them as kaffirs); an economist Chris Hart (who tweeted that blacks exhibited an attitude of self-entitlement owing to having been victims of Apartheid which ended more than 25 years ago); and most notably Gareth Cliff whose case ended in the courts where he emerged victorious after he appeared to defend Penny Sparrow’s views by invoking freedom of speech.
In response to the social media backlash that followed the posts made by these four individuals, their employers reacted by issuing statements and making public disavowals. Penny Sparrow’s employer of (social media) record at the time quickly disowned her claiming she was an ex-employee and completely denouncing her views, “Penny Sparrow’s comments are appalling and degrading and this is not someone we align ourselves with”. For her ‘kaffir’ remarks, Nicole De Klerk was fired after she had only been on the job for two days with her employer stating, “this behaviour is absolutely unacceptable and deeply upsetting . . . we do not condone or tolerate racist comments . . . with immediate effect Nicole has been dismissed from the company”. What makes Nicole de Klerk’s case interesting (and hopefully something to be interrogated in future) is the fact that her altercation took place offline but her victim took a picture of her, circulated it on social media with a narration of what had transpired and that led to her being identified, her employer seeking and eventually getting her axed from her job. In the case of Chris Hart, the Standard Bank Group issued a grave statement categorically distancing itself and maintaining, “the statements made by him (Chris Hart) are factually incorrect, make inappropriate assumptions about South Africa and have racist undertones”. In the case of M-Net with regards to Gareth Cliff, the network simply announced “Gareth Cliff will not be part of the judging panel for Idols SA Season 12”, adding “M-Net thanks Cliff for the critical role he has played …”
Cliff challenged his dismissal and won. But corporate disavowal as a strategy for online reputation management appears to be the default response to social media bashing as evidenced by how Changa Safari Camp were quick to throw the Higgins under the bus (or at least make a pretense of doing so). Changa Safari Camp issued a statement to the effect that: “Changa is deeply appreciative of our Zimbabwean and international support base and roots. The comments circulated do not in anyway reflect our values and ethos as a proudly Zimbabwean business. Mr Higgins has resigned as a director of the business and Mr and Mrs Higgins will have no further involvement with the operations of Changa Safari Camp.”
Vicarious liability and
the employer’s reaction
Generally speaking, one’s conduct outside the workplace should not concern their employer. However, one’s personal conduct online or offline should not put the company into disrepute or harm its public standing. This is the basic expectation of an employer and in my opinion, this is an obvious (albeit onerous) duty of an employee. This duty, to not bring one’s employer into disrepute, becomes even weightier in the context of social media and online conduct. It’s a burden, especially for those with controversial views that may conflict with the values of their employer.
Social media, and professional persecution in particular, present employers with unique challenges in terms of what disciplinary action should be taken and indeed, whether such action is warranted at all. Through professional persecution, the employer is made vicariously liable for the utterances of their employees — regardless of the private/personal/individual capacity in which the utterances are made.
In the face of social media bashing, many employers lean towards protecting their brands by disavowing the offending employees and taking extreme damage control measures to punish employees for transgressions that are unrelated to their professional conduct in order to pacify social media mobs.
While some employers are reactive, others choose to be proactive and craft social media guidelines or codes of conduct to ensure employees do not harm the institution through their online interactions.
Online Reporter