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GOINGVIRAL
BAYLOR PROFESSOR’S STUDY GOES VIRAL ON TWITTER
In today’s world, business practices are held accountable to ethics boards and consumers worldwide. The introduction of the Internet and the recent growing trend of companies utilizing social media has spurred a new opportunity for businesses to connect with their publics. However, this innovative media acts as a two-way lens that also positions the employee’s actions under the microscope. In December 2012, Marlene Neill, a public relations professor at Baylor University, published a study about PR practitioners and their ethical dilemmas in the “Journal of Mass Media Ethics.” This study, co-authored with Dr. Minette Drumwright, exemplified the impact social media can have on the popularity of a story, seeing as the study went viral shortly after a blogger named Sara Evans picked it up. “Before I knew it, there were ‘tweets’ from Spain, the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia,” Neill said. “Every time someone
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new picked it up there were multiple tweets about it.” The study could be found on Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn as well as Twitter. This study delved into “the how and why of public relations practitioners’ ethical decisions. The techniques practitioners use to raise ethical concerns and their motivation behind it,” Neill said. “There’s a range of different approaches you can use other than just going to your boss and saying ‘you’re wrong.’” Neill shared a story about an informant who had been asked to write a speech for a school district that would have been misleading to the public. His superiors asked him to write a speech a specific way, and he did what they wanted. However, he also wrote a second version – one that he felt would be more ethically sound. In the end, his superior ended up choosing the second speech he wrote. By choosing a less confrontational approach, practitioners may have more of an opportunity to be listened to. Recent college graduates may question exactly how to stand up to their superiors without potentially losing their job, but they likely may never find themselves in an ethically compromising situation when first starting out at a business. Neill reveals that the practitioners she “talked to that were senior executives said that they didn’t believe this idea of serving as an ethical conscious would be something associated with a new practitioner because of the fact they’re not in the board room when key decisions are being made.” However, the she did report instances where businesses put students in an ethical crisis during an internship. “It’s not too early to teach ethics in the classroom and prepare students for that,” Neill said. “In the classes I teach, I go over ethical scenarios and have students think through what they might do.” CONTRIBUTOR sahara price