Morality is an acquired taste. Little else can be said about it with certainty. Earlier this month, a bank employee tweeted unimaginably profane remarks to a journalist who was critiquing a certain government action. The bank in question decided to axe that employee. Soon after, the bank found itself in the middle of a counter campaign that demanded a boycott of that bank for firing that employee. Who’s right, and who’s wrong? That is the fundamental question that corporations and citizens need to start discussing without necessarily naming and shaming the persons and organisations in question.
On the face it, corporate employees may be well within their rights to say whatever they want to say on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or other social media as long as they are following the code of conduct of that platform, and of course law of the country they are in. The commonly received notion so goes that as long as employees are using their private social media account, their opinions and the language it is expressed in should not matter to corporations.
But there is a catch. While the social media account may be private, the content uploaded is anything but. Nowadays even private messages are also not private. Essays on “What ‘was’ privacy” were being published as early as the 2000s.
More importantly, the idea of freedom of expression has been redefined in 21st century. The lines between the public and private are increasingly getting blurry now. Pakistan may still be living in the Stone Age, but all over the world there is an increasing demand on corporations to be socially ethical. By extension a bank or any other type of corporation cannot afford to have employees who publicly make abusive or uncivil statements.
If, hypothetically, a bank employee logs in to his private Twitter account and states his personal opinion that all persons of a certain ethnicity are corrupt, then people have a right to question the bank because it raises question marks over the bank’s impartiality in lending. After all, corporations are run by humans, and not machines. Well, at least not yet!
In today’s world of public relations, corporations make money through the trust of their customers, regulators, and investors. This explains the expense and efforts on corporate brand building, and public relations.
Since employees’ social media updates can potentially hurt the brand image of their employers, corporations have genuine albeit often unrealised need to start protecting themselves, where one such tool is to ask all employees to sign off a social-media policy that prevents employees from hurting brand image by their personal views on public forums. This is not a trend that has caught on in Pakistan so far, but after the recent saga mentioned above many corporate boards will hopefully wake up to this realisation.
Journalists also need to rethink their Tweets and social media updates, at least those who are senior correspondents and those who hold editorial responsibilities. A host of senior correspondents and editors in Pakistan are found Tweeting downright biased statements often using cuss words - mocking individuals and the party or organisations those individuals belong to. This kind of behaviour questions their journalistic impartiality. They would do well to remember that it is not enough to be just or objective in their work, one has to be perceived to be just and objective as well.
Granted that the use of expletives in public has become fairly common over time. In fact, a few years ago the British High Court ruled that use of expletives in public or at officers of the state are not be punished by law because such usage has now become too common to be offended by it. But does that mean that excessive use of unforgiving mockery and abusive language is to be deemed morally correct or morally neutral in homes, universities or workplaces? The answer to this is not an outright yes or no. A good old-school test is whether one would use such language while sitting with their elders.
If man is to survive peacefully and gain synergies, then he must live collectively; and doing so will necessitate some shared concepts and practice of equity and justice – so observed the philosopher David Hume. This view forms the substantive purpose of law, which both positivists and natural law theorists share.
The law often trails behind evolving notions of social morality to satisfy this substantive purpose. But when enough conversations happen, sooner or later the law is changed to incorporate those notions. Ergo, how should humans in general, and employees in particular behave on social media is a question that requires a collective pondering over moral quandaries to which there are no easy answers. But the discussion must begin, in universities, and also at conferences organised by the likes of Management Association of Pakistan. And soon!