People should get fired because of what they say on social networks because their posts or tweets represent their personalities and manners of conduct. Employees also represent the companies they work for especially if they work in public relations or marketing. The customers relate to the people who represent a certain company and will choose to use their products or not based on their image in public. This image is formed and maintained by key employees and they have to pay attention to good behavior even when they are not working. Social networks represent a person in media and in the public and a private personality cannot be looked separately than the personality of the same person in public.
There is one case when a person got fired because of tweeting on Twitter and it is one of the most famous incidents on this topic. This is the case of Justine Sacco who got fired in 2013 after being rude in the media. She turned out to be uncivilized and disrespectful which gave right to her company to fire her. Her case demonstrates the power of social networks because she had a small number of followers before the incident and her tweets managed to have such a great impact on the society. She proved to be racist and to have prejudice against other nationalities. Justine might have made jokes, but her behavior did not present her company in good light because she worked in communications as a senior.
This kind of behavior is immature and has to be punished because it reflects the opinion of the company as well since she worked in the sector of communications. Justine was rude, impolite and immature in her tweets which she was sending on her way to South Africa and she was thirty years old at the time working as a senior. It was a great disrespect because not everything can be turned into a joke. She tweeted about a German man who smelled bad on the airplane, about teeth of the people in London and her final tweet sealed her fate: “And on Dec. 20, before the final leg of her trip to Cape Town: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” (Ronson). This tweet was disrespectful on many level, but most of all she turned out to be a bad person and a racist. This post suggests that white people cannot get AIDS because it is a disease of black people. She never thought about her colleagues who were black and the company was right to fire her.
Justine got on the plane and slept for the whole time after which she got a message from her friends who were worried for her. Some of the most influential tweets were: ““Oh man, @JustineSacco is going to have the most painful phone-turning-on moment ever when her plane lands” and “We are about to watch this @JustineSacco bitch get fired. In REAL time. Before she even KNOWS she’s getting fired.” (Ronson). She was a PR specialist and she underestimated the power of social media and social networks which is why her company had to fire her. Justine was not capable of doing her job in the right way because she was not the right person for it. She got the punishment she deserved and her tweets went viral: “As Sacco’s flight traversed the length of Africa, a hashtag began to trend worldwide: #HasJustineLandedYet.” (Ronson). Her case proves that a person does represent a company they work for all the time and cannot make posts on social networks that mock and discriminate people.
As the title suggest, this tweet is stupid and it ruined Justine’s life, but people are bound to ask themselves why was Justine writing such bad things to begin with and how is it possible that she never thought that it would have impact on her job since she was a communication specialist. It seems that she did not learn from her mistake because she said: ““SendGrid threw me under the bus. I felt betrayed. I felt abandoned. I felt ashamed. I felt rejected. I felt alone.” (Ronson). Instead of her being the one to apologize for being ignorant, she felt bad because her company did not protect her. It is understandable that the company had to protect their own reputation and she was about to ruin it. Moreover, she was not good at communications since she was unaware of the effect of social networks. It is also hard to imagine how someone who lives and works in New York can think bad about other cultures, since so many cultures live there as well. People are supposed to embrace cultural diversity and be grateful for the chance to share their experiences with people from other cultures.
It is astonishing to think that Justine never learned from her mistakes, she even used an opportunity to get another job. However, she did learn something about the use of social networks. “As a result, she now has a new job and is wary of what she shares on social media. She told Jon other than contributing to his book, she won't be speaking out about her story again” (Waterlow). She wanted for people to sympathize with her, but that was not possible because of her behavior. However, the only good side of her case and her mistake is that she is now a good example of how social networks can get people fired.
It can be argued that people should not get fired because of what they write on social networks, but in Justine’s case, this is not the case because of the nature of her work that is involved in communications. Her next job was also related to communications and she was involved in the abuse of a job position once again in 2015. “The DraftKings worker, Ethan Haskel, raked in a whopping $350,000 using the data — which included stats on players most used in the site’s Millionaire Makers contest” (Liotta). Justine worked as a communication’s director in this company at the time. It seems that there is a correlation between people’s personalities and their behavior at work and that these two spheres cannot be separated.
Social networking can be good or bad for any business because social networks can mobilize people in a digital world which can have impact on the real world. The opinion of the masses matters because most companies are trying to sell their products or services which is why they have to be careful about the way they maintain their public image. Benedetti wrote an article about the impact of social networks on media and he also mentions the case of Sacco as being one of the most infamous cases of getting fired because of the social media and adds: “Use emojis judiciously and never tweet and drive, Wiebesick advised. Emojis, also called emoticons, are cartoons and symbols that imply a variety of meanings and can be misconstrued” (Benedetii).
People who want to be present in public use social media to reach mass audiences. For example Felicia Day promotes her work on Twitter and she is successful at that. The good side of these networks is that activities performed online are effective. “These activities combine old and new media forms, but do so largely outside of the mainstream corporate entertainment and celebrity industries” (Ellcessor 47). The point is that people represent themselves as well as their work when they appear on social media and make posts. It is reasonable to think that employees are supposed to get fired for indecent behavior.
Works Cited
Ronson, Jon. "How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life." The New York Times Magazine 12 Feb. 2015. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0>.
Waterlow, Lucy. "'I lost my job, my reputation and I'm not able to date anymore': Former PR worker reveals how she destroyed her life one year after sending 'racist' tweet before trip to Africa ." Daily Mail. N.p., 16 Feb. 2015. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2955322/Justine-Sacco-reveals-destroyed-life-racist-tweet-trip-Africa.html>.
Liotta, Paul. "PR rep Justine Sacco once fired for offensive tweet about AIDS is now flack for FanDuel in fantasy sports scandal." Daily News. N.p., 7 Oct. 2015. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. <http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/infamous-tweeter-justine-sacco-pr-rep-fanduel-article-1.2388353>.
Benedetti, Marti. "Social media can be blessing and curse for business." Crain's Detroit Business 7 Mar. 2015. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. <http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20160307/NEWS/160309877/social-media-can-be-blessing-and-curse-for-business>.
Ellcessor, Elizabeth. "Tweeting @feliciaday: Online Social Media, Convergence, and Subcultural Stardom." Cinema Journal 51.2 (2012): 46-66. Print.
