Social Media Surveillance and Visibility

About the Research

To produce a detailed account of Facebook's role as a business service, we draw on 13 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with employees and self-employed consultants who use Facebook. These interviews took place between July and October 2009 and once again ranged from 45 minutes to an hour and a half in duration. Businesses were rapidly adopting social media at the time this research was completed. What started as a small group of readily identifiable workers has grown to the extent that social media are ubiquitous in the corporate realm. For this reason, these interviews were arranged and conducted in an exploratory manner. While the participants below come from diffuse backgrounds and perform different duties, roughly half of them do consulting work for clients, while the others are fully employed by a corporation.

Susan is employed at a digital marketing agency, where she develops marketing strategies for clients. She assesses whether social media services are a useful addition to these campaigns and offers clients guidance in terms of how to exploit services. Wade is employed at a venture capital firm where he is developing a Web–based application that relies on the labor of online communities. He is also a digital strategist who consults with organizations to help them connect with stakeholder groups through Facebook. Ben is a co–founding partner at a search engine optimization (SEO) company. He manages his clients' online reputations through social media services. Damien is the president of a software development company specializing in cloud computing for businesses. He develops software for managing Web content on sites like Facebook and also uses these services to promote this company. Liane is a self–employed consultant who focuses primarily on organizational development. She helps clients develop appropriate social media strategies. Corey is the president of a new media marketing agency. He works with large and mid–sized companies to develop marketing and public relations strategies on social media.

Matthew manages the technical support network for a transnational consumer electronics company. He scrutinizes social media to identify consumer feedback but also to recruit employees. Martin works for an independent gaming company that produces third–party applications for Facebook. In addition to developing applications, he manages a growing community of users on Facebook. Janine is a brand manager for a major food producer. She promotes new products on Facebook, scrutinizes the site for user feedback, and recruits Facebook users for viral marketing campaigns. Jared is the director of new media at a radio station in a mid–sized city. He manages a Facebook fan page by promoting the station and interacting with the station's online fan base. Joana is a marketing and communications manager for a major paint producer. She describes her work as a mix of advertising and public relations. Marc is a sales representative for a software company focusing on game-based learning for the academic market. He uses Facebook primarily to research and contact prospective clients. James is a communications officer with a public health organization funded by provincial and municipal governments. He uses Facebook to coordinate advertising and public relations strategies.

The context in which these interviews took place is worth noting. Businesses were partly concerned with managing their reputation, but they were also eager to find new sources of relevant information. Respondents experience some precariousness on Facebook as they do not have full control over their online reputation nor over the platform augmenting the visibility of that reputation. Yet they are also taking advantage of user activity on Facebook and other social networking sites. Overall they described their engagement with social media as a kind of personal information frontier.