Masters Level Assignment _ Project Plan
Facebook Crisis
By Anquatia Atabong, Christina Washek, James Painter & William Hardy
Table of Contents
Introduction to Case Study
Problem/Issue
Explanation & Analysis of the Problem
Recommendations/Solution
Alternate Viewpoints
Conclusion
References
Introduction to the Case Study
Leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Russian internet groups created fake accounts on the popular social media site, Facebook, which led to the spread of false information about presidential candidates, their policies and supported issues in attempt influence voters toward different presidential candidates.
CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and his company failed to prepare for false information being circulated on their site and failed to remedy the situation in a manner to preserve their views on objective content. As a result of this crisis, Facebook was held accountable of having knowledge that there was false information about presidential candidates spreading on their site and their poor supervision of this contributed to undermining the democracy in the United States in 2016.
Problem/Issues
Facebook did not properly regulate information and remove influential propaganda from their site.
CEO, Mark Zuckerberg initially said that there was no interference and later admitted that Facebook reacted slowly to the interference. Zuckerberg’s backtracking caused their company image to take a negative hit.
Facebook failed to give an adequate explanation for the widespread information on their platform. Facebook’s hesitancy to give an explanation showed a lack of transparency with the public.
Poor leadership and communication from Execs within the Company. Two top company executives claimed they were not aware everything going on in company.
Analysis of Problem
In the midst of the crisis, Facebook sought to end their relationship with PR firm, Definers Affairs in attempt to curve questions from critics. The fact that the two top leaders in the organization stated that they did not have much intel regarding the russian interference and the hiring of the PR firm speaks to the lack of responsibility they showed during this crisis. Ultimately, the two top execs delegate their tasks to other personnel groups in the organization and know or should have known about the controversies the social media platform was faced with.
As result of mishandling the crisis, Facebook’s public image has negatively been impacted. Facebook’s poor communication within their organization and lack of transparency with the public were two major factors for their precipitous decline in the social media landscape. In addition, news about the internal conflicts with executives in the company and hesitancy to give an adequate response to the scandal contributed to bad press for Facebook.
Recommendations
Conduct demanding training at appropriate level for employees and leadership in Facebook
Ensure risk and hazards are identified for users irt using Facebook
Produce Non-Disclosure agreements to protect users and Facebook
Leadership and employees are checked based on competences that fit workplace vision, morals, and ethics
Solutions
With the right type of training, responsibilities and expectations become mutually understood between the organization and the employees within it. This results with leaders at different levels becoming able to take responsibility for what employees do or fail to do. With supervising leaders, and leaders supervising employees in Facebook, mistakes and errors will become more preventable. Also Allowing to hold employees and leaders accountable for those successes or failures.
Training the right people in the positions they hold and holding them accountable, allows facebook to identify the weakest areas in Facebook. Allowing the company to improve those areas.
Training + Responsibility = Accountability
Facebook will have better control of what outside users can do with the products Facebook produces
Alternative View
Despite how negatively the Russians propaganda on Facebook affected the company, it also brought room for lots of improvement in terms of rules and regulations as well as doubled security which in turn keeps the users information more protected
The propaganda not only caused a scandal to the company but also shed light on how resourceful Facebook Ads could be for businesses.
CONCLUSION
Data was falsely misused & collected on Facebook which put its users at risk.
The situation was handled poorly with lack of accountability
Proper testing, training, and credentialing should be done in order to ensure that employees of Facebook are qualified to handle the information that they have access to.
References
Confessore, N. (2018, April 4). Cambridge analytica and facebook: The scandal and the fallout so far (published 2018). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html
CNET. https://www.cnet.com/news/definers-says-it-wasnt-hired-by-facebook-for-opposition-research/
Frenkel, S., & Singer, N. (2018, March 28). Facebook introduces central page for privacy and security settings (published 2018). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/technology/facebook-privacy-security-settings.html
FRPT Software snapshot. (May 17 2016). Facebook faces questions from the US Senate committee over news selection. FRPT-Software Snapshot. https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.umgc.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=574cd2bb-3048-4d6a-bc23-86e7719652e2%40sessionmgr4008
References Continued
Isaac, Mike, and Sheera Frenkel. “Facebook Security Breach Exposes Accounts of 50 Million Users.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Sept. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/technology/facebook-hack-data-breach.html.
Mihalcik, C. (2018, November 16). Definers says it wasn't hired by Facebook for opposition research.
Miller, P., F., Vandome, F., A., McBrewster, & John. (n.d.). Michael j. Williams.
SHANE SCOTT, and MIKE ISAAC. “Facebook to Turn Over Russian-Linked Ads to Congress.” The New York Times, 21 Sept. 2017.
Solon, Olivia. “2016: The Year Facebook Became the Bad Guy.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 12 Dec. 2016, www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/12/facebook-2016-problems-fake-news-censorship.
References Continued
Read, K., & van der Schyff, K. (2020). Modelling the intended use of facebook privacy settings. SA Journal of Information Management, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.4102/sajim.v22i1.1238
Sengupta, Kim. “Mark Zuckerberg Admits Facebook Was 'Slow to Understand' Election Interference.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 15 Feb. 2020, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-russian-interference-election-online-regulation-munich-conference-a9337646.html.
York, Dustin. “How Facebook's Crisis Response Missed the Mark.” PR Daily, 13 Dec. 2018, www.prdaily.com/how-facebooks-crisis-response-missed-the-mark/.