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Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Reuters
La Jornada Maya

Martes 27 de martes, 2018

For the past month I have been presenting my new book [i]Crisis y Comunicación[/i] (Tirant LoBlanch) to Mexican audiences in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Merida. This is a Spanish compilation of my views on managing crisis communications that I discussed in my English language books, [i]Guerrilla Communications[/i] and [i]Spokespersonry[/i] (Friesen Press). In each of these books, I advise readers to always get ahead of their crisis, take full responsibility for errors, come forward immediately when the crisis breaks, and preferably, before it breaks if they have advance knowledge. I also discuss the need to connect and empathize with victims to ensure that damage to the organization’s reputation is minimized.

I am at times amazed at captains of industry who don’t learn how to manage crisis communications. Here is one such case that affects all of us on social media.

On March 22, 2018, Mark Wilson wrote in Fast Company that “[i]Cambridge Analytica acquired the personal details of 30 million to 50 million Facebook users to create deep psychological profiles to influence voters during the Trump campaign. The data included demographic information like age and gender, but also users’ political views, jobs, IQs, their levels of neuroticism, and whether they might be militaristic or even occult[/i]”.

[i]Cambridge Analytica[/i] has issued a statement claiming that it never used data from Facebook in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. They have invited an independent auditor to review its operations.

Facebook is, however, on the line for this breach of trust.

People use Facebook and trust that their information will be kept confidential. While Facebook did not really divulge personal information, it reportedly did act as a conduit for questionnaires from independent applications on their site that, through the complicity of Facebook users who answered the survey and shared with friends, provided information to third parties that allegedly was compiled for targeted advertising, including false information reportedly fed to Facebook subscribers during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.

The fact that this crisis took place underscores the extent to which companies must plan in advance to deal with potential problems and must be able to immediately address the situation once it arises.

The silence of Facebook’s leadership while speculation ran rampant during three days was a fundamental error in judgment.

During the three days, media reported on Cambridge Analytica’s alleged use of Facebook users’ personal information and noted that former Facebook employees had warned senior management since 2011 that its cavalier attitude towards security could well lead to problems.

According to [i]The Guardian[/i] (March 22, 2018), “Sandy Parakilas, platform operations manager responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers between 2011 and 2012, told the [i]Guardian[/i] that other companies had used the same terms as Cambridge Analytica to access user’s data. He said that he had warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach”.

When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg finally agreed to be interviewed by CNN on March 21, he missed the four main points of proper crisis communications – accept full responsibility for your mistakes that have led to the crisis, be the first to disclose or at least comment on bad news immediately in order to manage the narrative; empathize with the victims; and, set out how you are going to resolve the problem.

Although he did apologize, Mr. Zuckerberg did not appear to discuss or take responsibility for Facebook’s security lapses that allowed third parties to access personal information, nor did he admit that his management team had been warned about possible problems well before the crisis emerged.

In his interview, Mr. Zuckerberg did not connect with the public. His language lacked empathy and remorse and he did not appear aware of the negative feelings towards Facebook that this development had caused or the deep concerns of his clients.

His failure to get ahead of the story and say the right thing created an unfavorable buzz – so unfavorable that it was one of the factors behind Facebook’s market value fall of 11 percent or US$60 billion in the days after the story broke. In addition, the uncertainty caused by the disclosure and response have damaged the Facebook brand.

These events underscore the rapid and significant impact that a crisis can have and the price one pays for not managing the crisis effectively from the moment that it breaks.

With all of the reporting during the past two years about how Facebook was being used by Russian hackers to disseminate false information during the 2016 US presidential election, one would think that the company would have a set of communications strategies and key messages ready for implementation if and when a story like this broke.

Instead, Facebook kept silent for days while its market value eroded and share prices fell. The uncertainty about what comes next is sure to continue affecting share prices, especially if governments begin to look for ways to regulate Facebook; something which Mr. Zuckerberg said he was open to.

Mr. Zuckerberg could have addressed possible remedies.

He did say that Facebook will carefully screen applications that seek to use its platform to enhance the Facebook experience. He could have gone further, for example, by stating that Facebook would seriously investigate working with an accredited fact checker like Snopes to put a link to that site on each Facebook page so that users could immediately verify the truthfulness and accuracy of any post.

This would have demonstrated a creative way to try to reestablish client trust in its product.
The fact that Facebook does not appear to have thought through its relationships with application creators and ensure that ancillary apps would not blemish its reputation is a management failing that Mr. Zuckerberg has promised to correct.

Facebook’s lack of a communications strategy was poor corporate policy especially at a time when many governments and civil society organizations are focusing on how the Internet can be regulated.

Luckily for Facebook, the platform has no real direct competition -- leaving their users with no real alternatives other than to get off their platform if they are really upset. As a result, all is not lost if Facebook management quickly takes decisive corrective action to keep users and rebuild trust.

However, the responsibility does not end with Facebook.

We are all to blame.

Many of us are so anxious to enjoy what Andy Warhol called our “fifteen minutes of fame” that we will post the most intimate details of our lives and photos on social media websites or any story that comes our way that we think will get a “like” without considering if it’s true or simply divisive propaganda aimed at manipulating our preconceptions to entice us to pass it on. We publish what we want and show what we want with little regard as to how this information will be used by others and the impact it can have. And sometimes we can be embarrassed by what goes public.

We feel empowered.

But empowerment comes at a cost, and many are paying a price for their on-line indiscretions.

To learn more about the information that Facebook keeps on you and to download this data, go to https://www.facebook.com/help/405183566203254

[b][email protected][/b]


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