Category: Facebook

Over the last decade, the influence of digital platforms has generated great progress. Large tech firms (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google) have changed people’s lifestyles by providing services. These services, often free of charge, have changed the way people communicate and interact with others, shop, and find information. There are many advantages to such large digital platforms, however, they have also gained considerable control of consumer information, which reinforces their market power. This has caused concern not only in terms of competition but also in consumer protection and privacy. Therefore, this paper analyses the effects of monopolies of large tech firms in the digital platform markets. This paper is outlined in three main parts. Firstly, it demonstrates why market power and monopolies are likely to emerge in the digital economy. Secondly, this paper displays the concerns about monopolies in the digital economy. Further, it explains what can be done to prevent the potential issues that can arise from monopolies in the digital platform markets. Finally, the paper ends with a conclusion summarizing the main points of this research.

Market Power and Monopolies in the Digital Economy

The most extreme form of market power is a monopoly. A monopoly is an industry in which only one company provides a good or service that cannot be replaced by another. The digital economy has a natural market power which occurs when a firm obtains market power through barriers to entry created by the firm itself. In this case, having a big network is a natural barrier for others. It makes entering the digital market difficult because the smaller firms will have issues establishing against a big network, like GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon: the 4 largest tech firms). The natural barrier of digital economy is also the principal key of resources. Its network size can only provide value to users when it attracts the largest number of consumers. Its value increases due to network externalities which occur when the value of a product increases as more consumers begin to use it. Due to the network effect, market power and monopolies are more likely to emerge in the digital economy because of the increasing desire of people wishing to register on a digital platform and share with as many people as possible or be seen by as many people as possible. They have no interest in going to a smaller platform that has fewer users, which means less potential virtual friends. For example, Facebook has monopoly power in the social networking market and owns as a key resource that millions of users log in daily. Therefore, Facebook has a greater value than other social networking, such as Myspace, because it has more people using it. Subsequently, Facebook will always gain more subscribers and then more market power than Myspace or other platforms and therefore, a monopoly on the social networking market is more likely to appear. The same process for e-commerce platforms occurs where sellers and buyers are more likely to go on the platform with the most users to have the biggest chance to sell or to buy the products they want. Big firms will always get bigger. For example, the more people use Google Search, the more Google Search will increase its performances, the more people will use Google Search. When a lot of people use a platform, it creates a lot of data on users that the digital platform can monetize from advertisers and make revenues to invest in the platform. Therefore, they can improve the platform’s algorithm that generates more users. It is a vicious cycle, called feedback loops, that prevents small new businesses from developing and therefore prevents competition in the digital economy.

Competition Issues in the Digital Economy

As the largest tech firms’ market power is growing, strong concerns are rising too. Platforms benefiting from significant network effects and which are likely to lock a market because of their great market power are called ‘gatekeepers’.

Giant tech firms like GAFA, are ecosystems in the economy, they expand fast and in a lot of different domains. They may have a monopole in one service, but they still want to expand and be present on other platforms. Google proposes in 2020 several kinds of different products and services to its users. Google was first only a search engine, but now offers operating systems, G Suite productivity, devices, search and web browsing, specialized search, streaming, and navigation. Facebook also expended its services and products by offering social media, retail, devices, and streaming platforms. It makes them able to observe, collect, and combine even more data on users. These ecosystems make the competition in the digital economy more difficult because firms such as Google and Facebook already have more data on consumers than small firms. So, they start one step ahead of new companies that would like to enter the new market at the same time as big companies do. Over the last decade, Facebook made more than 60 acquisitions. Selling out young firms to a giant tech firm provides economic advantages: a generous pay-out, faster and more broadly technological advantages. However, the acquisition of young promising firms reduces the chance of potential competitors.

Another consequence of such a large market power is that companies can abuse their dominance by imposing excessive fees on consumers, tough contract conditions, or worsening the privacy terms and data collection offered to consumers. Monopolies mean no competitors, which means costumers cannot chose another product, thus the organization can raise their prices or change their terms because consumers depend on them. For advertisers to be able to advertise, they almost always must go through a digital platform like Google or Facebook, the gatekeepers, that controls advertisers’ access to users of their service. This is when abuse or exploitation can occur. The digital platforms will set excessive prices or set conditions for the use of the platform which are not clear or which are discriminatory. For example, in France, Google France was condemned because its Google Ads advertising platform had rules that were not transparent.

Even though there are a lot of negative consequences of monopolies for small new tech firms, there are some positive consequences for the users. By selling users’ personal data, consumers get many services for free (e.g., Facebook, Google) and get more choice because of their larger data base. Their dominant position in the digital market gives them more opportunities to invest in the research and development, which gives the users continue technological innovations.

Prevention Against Potential Issues from Monopolies in the Digital Platform Markets

In the United States of America, there is a law called antitrust law. This law has been in existence for more than a century. Its purpose is to regulate the conduct and organization of commercial companies and generally aims to promote competition for the benefit of consumers. This law is mainly composed of three acts: the Sherman Act (1890), the Clayton Act (1914), and the Federal Trade Commission Act (1914). The functions of these acts are the prohibition of price-fixing and the operations of cartels, the restriction of mergers and acquisitions of organizations, and the prohibition of abuse of monopoly power.

Although the antitrust law exists, this did not prevent the formation of monopolies in the digital economy. Certain digital platforms developed into monopolies due to the underenforcement by privacy and data protection regulators and by antitrust enforcers.

In June 2019, the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law directed an investigation into the state of competition online and wrote a rapport in 2020. In this report, Congress relied on a wide range of guidelines to ameliorate the conditions necessary for fair competition. The report proposes as solutions to break certain dominant platforms apart from the companies’ other businesses and activities and demands that the platforms provide all users with equal terms for equal products and services. The report also calls for laws to be changed to impose a higher bar for approving future tech industry mergers and acquisitions and requests Congress to boost the enforcement powers of antitrust regulators, such as the Federal Trade Commission, and to increase the budgets of the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated that the market power and monopolies are likely to emerge in the digital economy because digital economy has a natural barrier, its size. The size of a digital platform is particularly important as its value increases due to network externalities. People want to be on the digital platform with the most users to have more potential virtual friends, buyers or sellers. And when digital platforms are getting more users, they are also getting more users data which they can sell to advertisers. With these revenues, large tech firms can expand even more, and make it difficult for smaller firms to compete. The fact that that dominant tech firms are getting too big and too powerful raises concerns. Large tech firms are acquiring smaller ones and are spending on other platform markets which reduces the chance of potential competitors. Moreover, certain dominant tech firms abuse their monopoly by imposing unfair conditions to their customers. There is already an American law that promotes competition in the markets called the antitrust law. But due to the underenforcement by privacy and data protection regulators and by antitrust enforcers, large tech firms developed into monopolies. That is why the regulators and enforcers want to reinforce the antitrust law and proposes multiple solutions to solve the lack of competition in the digital economy; for example, separation of certain large tech firms and ask firms to propose fair and equal conditions for their products and services to their consumers.

Monopolies in the digital economy have many negative effects for firms who want entry to the online market because of the winner-takes-all situation and the fact that dominant firms take advantages of their ‘gatekeepers’ status. On the other hand, a monopoly can have a positive effect for the consumer. It offers to the consumer a broader choice and as the giant firms are comparable to ecosystems, it makes finding a product or a service easier for users. However, due to missing competitors, monopolies tend to lower their quality, because users cannot choose another product.

Large tech firms should give the other new firms a chance to rise in the market. They should not acquire them just to become bigger and to have a larger power on the market. Furthermore, dominant platforms should not take advantage of their position by imposing unfair conditions to its consumers and they should be more transparent. It is understandable that it is challenging for authorities to manage such large firms, because they innovate and grow extremely fast. However, authorities should review the laws governing digital platforms, because it is a fairly new market that we still do not know everything about and that grows extremely fast.

References

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8. The Washington Post, M. G. (2020, October 6). Democrats Call for Congress to Rein In, Break Up Big Tech. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/democrats-call-for-congress-torein-in-break-up-big-tech/2020/10/06/08166c76-0832-11eb-8719- 0df159d14794_story.html
9. Wikipedia contributors. (2020, December 6). United States Antitrust Law. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#:%7E:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20antitrust,for%20the%20benefit%20of%20consumers

In their article, Seder and Oishi (2012) ask a novel question based on previous research conducted by Harker and Keltner (2001) which had demonstrated that there was a relationship, namely a positive correlation, between the smile intensities (as a measure of expressed positive emotionality) of women in their yearbook photographs and their self-reported well-being decades later. Seder and Oishi (2012) had 2 main questions. For their first question, they examined whether positive emotional expression in informally posed photographs, such as Facebook profile pictures, are also related to future life satisfaction and whether they could replicate the previous findings of Harker and Keltner (2001). Secondly, Seder and Oishi (2012) asked how and why could such a relationship between expression of positive affect and future well-being exist, and what other variables might mediate this relationship. Also, after having successfully replicated the main findings of Harker and Keltner (2001), Seder and Oishi (2012) noted that their sample consisted of early adapters to Facebook and this might suggest that the sample may not be representative of different Facebook users, so they decided to replicate the findings, again, in another sample. They also wanted to check the relationship between other variables and extraversion again as well, so they eventually conducted a second study.

The authors had multiple hypotheses. First, they argued that the intensity of Facebook users’ smiling would predict their future life satisfaction. Secondly, they proposed that extraversion is a third variable that mediates the relationship in the first hypothesis. Thirdly, they hypothesized that a more intense smile may predict better social relationships, which, in turn, could predict a higher future life satisfaction.

The researchers employed a longitudinal study design. Since the researchers aimed to investigate the predictive power of smiling intensity specifically on -future- life satisfaction, I think that the use of a longitudinal research design can be said to be the most appropriate method possible. However, the longitudinal research design brings with itself a major disadvantage: the possibility of sample attrition. In fact, almost 48% of the sample dropped out in study 1, and almost 27% of the sample dropped out in study 2 between the start and the end of the research processes. It is likely that the researchers knew that this could create a systematic bias in the sample if participants with a certain characteristic were more likely to drop out or stay in the research. Therefore, they analyzed the descriptive statistics of the groups who dropped out and those who completed the follow-ups and found that there were no significant differences in the variables that the research aimed to investigate between the groups to deal with this caveat of longitudinal research.

The main variables of interest in the study were smile intensity, life satisfaction, extraversion, and social relationships satisfaction. First, the researchers collected self-reported extraversion data through an extraversion assessment at the beginning of the participants’ first semester at college. Extraversion ranged from 1 to 5. At the end of the first semester, self-reported life satisfaction, operationalized as the scores on the Satisfaction with Life Scale ranging from 5 to 35 (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), and self-reported social relationship satisfaction scores ranging from 1 to 7. After this data collection, smile intensity data, which was operationalized as the intensity of action in specific facial muscle units in the participant’s most recent codable Facebook profile picture ranging from 2 to 10, was collected.

The participants were University of Virginia freshmen who used Facebook and had a suitable profile picture in Facebook at the time of the experiment. The researchers used a (non-probability) purposive sampling to only select students who were freshmen at the university and had a codable Facebook profile picture. Since the researchers wanted to use Facebook pictures to assess the hypothesized relationship, I think that the sampling technique was appropriate. However, a non-probability sample that consists solely of college students is likely to be biased and non-representative of the general population. So, if the researchers had more resources, probability sampling would have obviously been a better choice since it is likely that it would make the sample more representative.

The researchers conducted a t-test to examine the difference between men and women’s smiling intensities. In line with previous research, women’s smiling was more intense. The researchers also used correlation and linear regression analyses to investigate the relationships and predictive strengths of smile intensity on life satisfaction and the other variables– extraversion and social relationship satisfaction. The main results showed that there was a statistically significant relationship between smile intensity and future life satisfaction even after controlling for extraversion. Also, smile intensity did predict social relationship satisfaction at the end of the first semester, and relationship satisfaction itself was significantly related to future life satisfaction in both studies. Although there was not a significant statistical support for extraversion being a mediating factor for the relationship between smile intensity and future life satisfaction in the first study, the results of the second study did show a significant effect.

People tend to not put that much thought into Facebook and its negative effects on happiness it is just part of their daily lives. In 2020, there were 2.7 billion active users on Facebook, and I wonder how many of those people have thought about the effects it has on happiness. I believe Facebook can have a negative impact on the pursuit of happiness because it can disconnect people from real-life interactions, consume valuable time, and lead to social comparison.

People’s addiction to Facebook and the need to check it takes people out of the moment without even realizing It. I am very guilty of this and try to check myself, but I often end up consuming on Facebook when I should be interacting with my daughter, and family, or at least doing something productive. Technology has changed the way people interact with everything, in “There Is No App For Happiness” Max Storm pointed out “The constant glancing into our smartphone to see if anyone has pinged us, while a friend is sitting across the table speaking to us, are indicators that we are addicted to something that is making us less considerate and more alienated. “. People feel the need to be in touch and share what they are doing on Facebook constantly because people feel like we need to project ourselves in a certain way and keep up that “image” on Facebook rather than real life. When people start projecting an image on Facebook, they do not want people to see them out of that light usually, so people avoid real interactions to keep up with it, disconnecting themselves from real life. When people are disconnected from real-life interactions, it stunts growth in communication and meaningful relationships. Therefore, when people lack in these areas it interferes with the pursuit of happiness.

Facebook also consumes our time, it affects our ability to do other things and tends to other parts of our life including health, relationships, and culture. The moment people pick up the phone they get sucked in by notifications from Facebook informing people whose birthday it is, who uploaded a new picture, and even a couple of messages soon all of a sudden you look up and have been scrolling for an hour. In “There Is No App For Happiness” Max Storm stated “Time is not only money, but it is also much more than that; it is the minutes and seconds of our mortal life. Your time is the finite resource from which you experience this world — everyone, everything, and especially that which you are devoted to and live for.” What I believe he is trying to say by that statement is what we invest our time in ultimately contributes to our pursuit of happiness. If we are too busy spending time on the wrong things that do not provide people with the basics or help improve our lives, then we are delaying/harming our happiness. We cannot get back time, so we need to use what little time we have wisely, and mindlessly scrolling is only taking away from actual things that deserve our time.

While the social comparison is natural, I feel that with Facebook people see it more as a daily competition between people they connect with. Social comparison is basically comparing life choices, abilities, and traits to others typically in our peer groups or people whom we are similar to. This has a negative effect on the pursuit of happiness because it damages our self-image by constantly comparing ourselves to our peers and their accomplishments and abilities. We feel our own accomplishments and abilities are no longer enough because we see someone a little further in life than us on Facebook and we feel like we should be there by now also. When people see other people doing better in life, it makes them feel behind and sad like they should have done something else and then they would be in equal situations which is usually never the case. People tend to only post their successes, good deeds, and material things; they create this image of themselves that they wish to portray to people on social media, especially Facebook. People tend to forget that people are doing the same thing as they are trying to do; portray an image. The image rarely includes the downfalls and depressing parts of a person’s life which most people understandably want private. Comparing ourselves to others when we do not see every detail and thing, they went through just is not fair to ourselves. We need to remember to focus on our own journey and successes and be proud of those to stay in the pursuit of happiness.

All in all, I believe Facebook can have negative effects on the pursuit of happiness. While a lot of people can argue the reasons why Facebook helps them in the pursuit of happiness, I think disconnection, consumption of time, and social comparisons are something to consider when using Facebook, so it won’t be detrimental to the user’s happiness.

Abstract

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in Dobbs Ferry New York and is an entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is also the founder of the well-known social media website and app called Facebook. This well-known social media website started off as a site that connected attendees of Harvard University, the college Mark had attended. After its success at the college it was then made public in 2004. Since then Mark Zuckerberg has experienced many trials, errors and success. These experiences have all assisted in developing the leadership skills that Mark Zuckerberg possess today. However, while Zuckerberg does possess many attributes that make an excellent leader such as the ability to motivate and empower employees. There are some crucial skills that need Zuckerberg should work on in order to ensure the future success of the company.

Leadership Style and Qualities

There are many leadership qualities that Mark Zuckerberg possess that have largely contributed to the continued success of Facebook. Through the company’s success it shows that his current strategies and leadership qualities are very strong. One major factor that has contributed to its success is Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership style. His style can be described as democratic, belligerent, and encouraging. This is because Zuckerberg has a tendency to focus on sensitivity to group relationships. He also allows employees to select their projects and set their own work schedule. He consistently motivates encourages and his group members to share ideas and suggestions. As a democratic leader Mark Zuckerberg also encourages better job satisfaction and high levels of productivity that are based on innovation and creativity. Zuckerberg also utilizes his five P’s elements for success. These five P’s include passion, purpose, people, product, and partnerships (Chris, 2015).

These five Ps all serve a different purpose and assist in displaying why Zuckerberg has leadership qualities. The first P or passion is included because passion is a driving factor that fuels perseverance and important quality for leaders to have. Having passion for what he does allowed him to work though difficulties and taking each failure as a learning opportunity instead of giving up. The second P or purpose reminds Zuckerberg of what he is in business for which allows him to make better decisions about who to hire and making a better product.

People is the third p and is included because to Zuckerberg employees are an important part of a business and should be allowed the freedom and take risks. Product is the fourth p and it is included to reinforce the commitment Zuckerberg has into Facebook. Partnerships are also included because Zuckerberg recognizes his weaknesses and brings in the right people to form partnerships in order to be successful (Walter, n.d.).

Mark Zuckerberg can also be described as a transformational leader. This is because he motivates his employees through goal setting, offering incentives, and providing opportunities that allow his employees to grow. Additionally, Zuckerberg inspires and empowers his employees with a clear vision and goal (Clark, 2014). A clear vision and goal allow employees to be guided by what is to be achieved and how they can contribute. Moreover, employees are also taught coding techniques that have been developed by the company to enable them complete projects more efficiently. This exemplifies how important intellectual stimulation is to Zuckerberg as a transformational leader (Wixson, 2016).

Additional attributes of Zuckerberg include his ability to remove traditional hierarchies. Zuckerberg sees all employees as equal and encourages them to share ideas. By removing hierarchies, he is also simultaneously removing barriers between executives and other employees. Furthermore, he has legitimacy and is deeply involved with the company.

Motivating Employees

The ability to motivate employees is integral to the success of a manager and ultimately the success of a company. This is because motivation represents an employee’s desire and commitment to perform. Managers at Facebook including Zuckerberg understand this which is why there is a greater emphasis on motivation strategies. Moreover, their motivation strategies are integrating which places an emphasis on both employee satisfaction and performance equally. This can be shown through examples of how Facebook is able to motivate their employees. One common way the Zuckerberg motivates his employees is by offering many incentives. Zuckerberg understands that each individual needs to be motivated by what they find exciting. Therefore, he offers a wide range of incentives in an attempt to make everyone happy. For example, he provides engineers the opportunity to create the best products and gives business executives large financial bonuses. Zuckerberg also rewards employees that exceptionally surpass or meet their goals by doubling their stock option. However, if an employee performs poorly or consistently fails to meet goals they are suspended or terminated. This shows how Zuckerberg utilizes the integrating approach as he puts a great emphasis on satisfaction by offering great incentives but also values performance and punishes those who fail to meet the company standards (A Study of the Management Style of Mark Zuckerberg, 2018).

Additional incentives offered by the company include offering free food and a meritocratic promotion system. Employees at Facebook are also motivated by the flexibility that they are offered. For example, employees are allowed to choose their working hours instead of enforcing strict hours and employees are given the option to work from home whenever needed. Facebook also provides its employees with laptops that allow workers to change their working locations whenever they need (Wood, 2018). Furthermore, Facebook also utilizes an engagement-centric approach to keep employees happy. This approach puts a greater emphasis on the strengths of its employees in order to promote motivation. The company believes that a greater focus on strengths is a big driver for an employee’s engagement with their job which in turn is a primary factor in their performance (Hoefflinger, 2017).

Empowering

The ability to empower employees is another attribute that successful managers must have. The ability to empower others means providing freedom for people to successfully do what they want to do, rather than getting them to do what you want them to do. Managers who empower people remove controls, constraints, and boundaries for them instead of motivating, directing, or influencing their behavior. Additionally, empowered employees have shown to be more productive, engaged, satisfied, more innovative, and create higher quality products and services in comparison to unempowered employees. Through successful empowerment managers can multiply their effectiveness and become more successful. Facebook is able to empower its employees by giving them the freedom to choose the projects that they work on. Additionally, Facebook empowers its employees by encouraging employees to share their ideas and allowing employees to point out f

Ethical Standards

Ethical standards are important for any leader or manger to have. This is because it is ultimately the leader’s duty to institutionalize ethical values into the organization. Moreover, the leader should be the focus and biggest practitioner of the ethical rules in leadership approach and decision making. An ethical leader should also utilize a style of leadership that encourages universal standards such as reliability, impartiality and justice. It should also reinforce these values through communication with viewers and supports the development of moral thought (Bekir, 2017). However, whether or not Mark Zuckerberg can be called an ethical leader is questionable. This is mainly because while Facebook has a corporate responsibility to evolve and keep in touch with the changing business environment and has adopted a time-progressing policy that keeps up with environmental issues. He has still been involved in numerous scandals that seriously questioned his ethical standing.

One scandal that questioned his morals was when Zuckerberg refused to remove content that promoted Holocaust deniers from the website (Olen, 2018). Zuckerberg had also been involved in a scandal where he was accused of infringing upon the rights of Facebook users. This scandal resulted in Zuckerberg facing serious legal trouble. Zuckerberg has also stated that someone can be unethical and still legal and that is the way he lives his life (Randy, 2019). This is a serious issue because this can lead to an unethical corporate culture. Furthermore, the unjustifiable unethical engagement in certain acts that the CEO makes as an individual drags the entire business into disgrace which ultimately damages its future opportunities. Some of the reasons why Zuckerberg acted unethically cannot be corroborated and it leaves many questions regarding his ethical conduct as an executive. A contributing factor to his behavior could be the fact that he is young and inexperienced. However, with age advancement, maybe he will find it appropriate to act more responsibly from informed experience as a CEO (Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Executive Ethics, 2019). My recommendation for Zuckerberg would be to reevaluate his morals and implement better values into his organization in order to prevent further scandals.

Risks

Zuckerberg could also be more inclined to take part in questionable behavior because he is also a big risk taker. He even advises his employees to take also engage in risk taking behavior. This is partly because he is a big believer that risks are likely to result in rewards and has even said that “the greatest risk is not taking any risks.” However, he also advised to not take big risks too often. I agree that it is important to take risks but, I would recommend Zuckerberg to include clearer directions to employees about what constitutes a “big” risk and how often should they engage in this behavior.

Conclusion

It is very evident that Mark Zuckerberg possess many attributes that make him a successful leader. However, it is also very evident that his integrity and ethical standards need to be altered. The previous scandals have been detrimental to the company and in order to fully recover and prevent future situations from arising it would be of great interest for Zuckerberg to change his ways. Failing to do so could result in a corrupt corporate culture or even the removal of his position as CEO.

References

1. A Study of the Management Style of Mark Zuckerberg. (2018, December 18). Retrieved from gradesfixer.com: https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/a-study-of-the-management-style-of-mark-zuckerberg/
2. Bekir, K. (2017). The Impact of Ethical Climate and Ethical Leadership on Ethical Codes Practices. International Journal of Management Economics & Business, 563-573.
3. Chris, J. (2015, August 25). 5 Mark Zuckerberg Leadership Style Commandments . Retrieved from josephchris.com: http://www.josephchris.com/5-mark-zuckerberg-leadership-style-commandments
4. Clark, E. (2014, November 24). Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Leadership. Retrieved from elijahclark.com: https://elijahclark.com/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-leadership/
5. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Executive Ethics. (2019). Retrieved from bohatala.com: https://bohatala.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-executive-ethics/
6. Hoefflinger, M. (2017, April 11). How Facebook keeps its employees the happiest, according to a former inside. Retrieved from businessinsider.com: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-keeps-employees-happy-2017-4
7. Olen, H. (2018). The Moral and Ethical rot at Mark Zuckerberg and Sherly Sandberg’s Facebook: why would anyone be surprised? Washinton Post.
8. Randy. (2019, July 26). You Can Be Unethical and Still Be Legal . Retrieved from 15minutebusinessbooks.com: http://www.15minutebusinessbooks.com/blog/2019/07/26/you-can-be-unethical-and-still-legal-said-mark-zuckerberg-no-thank-you-mr-zuckerberg/
9. Walter, E. (n.d.). How to Lead Like Zuck. Retrieved from inc.com: https://www.inc.com/ekaterina-walter/as-zuckerberg-turns-30-leadership-lessons.html
10. Wixson, C. (2016, October 31). Mark Zuckerberg: Transformational Leader. Retrieved from appliedcommunication.org: https://www.appliedcommunication.org/?p=360
11. Wood, S. (2018, September 6). 12 Suprising Ways Facebook, Google, and Disney Motivate Their Teams (without using money). Retrieved from linkedin.com: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/12-surprising-ways-facebook-google-disney-motivate-teams-sandra-wood

Facebook is a well-known social media platform that likely everyone you know has used at one point or another. So how does that affect the human psyche? With countless variables keeping Facebook in mind, let’s take two and take a deep dive. The topic of this report is how a person’s Narcissism and Self-esteem correlates with their Facebook use. Further discussing what that means and why that is relevant and important information. The finding s show a positive correlation between narcissism levels and Facebook use. They also show a negative correlation between self-esteem and Facebook use. This aims to show in depth said information in discussion with what that means for one’s well-being. This report aims to investigate the impact of Facebook use in our daily lives.

More particularly how it effects a person’s Self-esteem and levels of Narcissism. To start with, Facebook is a social media platform that arguably kicked off the social media era after myspace fell out of relevancy. Facebook themselves reported that as of June 2019 they saw an average of 1.59 billion active users daily. Furthermore, coming out with a whopping 2.41 billion monthly active users (‘Company Info | Facebook Newsroom’, 2019). Certainly nothing to scoff at. Keeping that in mind this research report seeks to investigate the link between high amounts of Facebook use and the human psyche. This is important because understanding how this prominent online social network impacts our lives down to the way we think, and feel is an important factor of living a healthy and happy lifestyle. More specifically this piece intends to find how a person’s self-esteem and levels narcissistic behaviour is affected by high levels of Facebook use.

Narcissism. Several researchers define this differently. In this particular report the definition comes from Christopher J. Carpenter’s article (2011) where he references Riskin and Terry (1988) discussing what stands a narcissistic personality inventory or ‘NPI’. Defining traits such as a person being incapable of deal with or accept criticism, feeling as though they deserve special treatment and favours from those around them without having done anything worthy of such behavior without reciprocation and have “a grandiose sense of self-importance or uniqueness” (C.J., Carpenter, 2011, p.1). So, what does that have to do with Facebook? Put simply “Selfies”. This is a photo an individual take of themselves and posts publicly online. Results from Jung-Ah Lee and Yongjun Sung’s article found the feedback people received from these pictures was a notable aspect. Meaning those with higher levels of narcissism were significantly more involved in the ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ that were attached to their picture. This of course fed the ego of these people consequentially resulting in this behaviour (Lee, J., & Sung, Y., 2016, p.4). Keeping this in mind, the hypothesis here is that the higher a person’s Narcissism is the more they will use Facebook in order to continuously validate their inflated self-pride. In fact, in another report it was found that people who scored high on narcissism spent a lot more time on Facebook and aimed to have a more extensive friends list (Eşkisu, M., Hoşoğlu, R., & Rasmussen, K. 2017, p.6).

The other variable in this investigation is self-esteem. Self-esteem is defined by Smith, Mackie, and Claypool (2014) in N. Hawi, and M. Samaha’s article as, and I quote, “an individual’s positive or negative evaluation of himself or herself” (2016, p.2). Relating back to Facebook use, in a study by A. Błachnio and A. Przepiorka they found people who used Facebook excessively scored quite low on tests assessing self-esteem and life satisfaction (2018, p.5). Knowing this information is can be hypothesised that the lower a person’s self-esteem is the more time they will spend using Facebook. This comes from the researcher as shown and the idea that a person with a low self-esteem will spend copious amounts of time in an attempt to make themselves feel better about themselves and gain public validation.

To reiterate, this research report aims to investigate the impact of high levels of Facebook use in our daily lives in a way that pertains to narcissism and self-esteem. To do this an online survey was taken by students studying 1002PSY and their friends and family. I hypothesise that Narcissism will be positively correlated with Facebook use, meaning the more narcissistic you are the more time you will spend on Facebook. Furthermore, Self-esteem will be negatively correlated with Facebook use meaning the less self-esteem you have the more you will use Facebook. Although only forty-five of the sixty enrolled contributed to the study, in total there was three hundred and fifty-eight participants with the exclusion of those who do not use Facebook. Of these partakers there was two hundred and forty-eight females, one hundred and six males, and four other people involved in the study from ages seventeen to fifty-nine years of ages. Knowing this, the Mean age is 22.51 and the Standard Deviation is 11.18. University students studying 1002PSY in Gold Coast and Mt. Gravatt were asked to complete an online survey about their Facebook use and ask their family and friends to participate as well. The survey took approximately ten minutes to complete. The test encompassed a wide range of variables about Facebook use and its relation to its impact on the adolesces minds. As previously stated, the two variables that will be discussed out of the many tested are Narcissism and Self-esteem in relation to Facebook use as referenced in the survey results.

The online survey included the following relevant measures. For narcissism the scale was adapted from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory by Ames, D. R., Rose, P., & Anderson, C. P. The newly modified NPI-16 is a brief measure of narcissism (Journal of Research in Personality, 2006, 40, 440-450). Five questions related to levels of narcissism are asked and participants were asked to rate on a scale of one, strongly disagree, to seven, strongly agree. And for self-esteem, this scale was adapted from Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, M., 1965, Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.). This one asked five questions about a person and their self-esteem and again asked them to rate on a scale of one, strongly disagree, to seven, strongly agree.

Finally, for Facebook use, Six items adapted from the Facebook Intensity Scale (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007) were used to measure how much participants used Facebook (e.g., “Facebook is a part of my everyday activity”; 1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Scores on the items were averaged, such that higher scores indicated greater Facebook use.

The table shows the Mean, Standard Deviation or ‘SD’ and each variables correlation with Facebook use. For Narcissism the data shows a positive correlation between levels of narcissism. For self-esteem there was a negative correlation. For the specific statistics see Table one. Correlational analysis was used to examine relationships between each variable and Facebook use. A significant positive correlation emerged between levels of narcissism and Facebook use, such that greater levels of narcissism was associated with more time spent on Facebook (r = .24, p = .05). A highly significant correlation was found between self-esteem and Facebook use, such as low levels of self-esteem was associated with high levels of Facebook use (r= -.22, p = .001). The objective of this report is to explore the effect of elevated use of Facebook regularly in a narcissistic and self-esteem-related manner. As the above results show both hypothesises were supported in these findings. The first hypothesis was that the more narcissistic a person was the more time they would spend on Facebook. Which the resulted showed rang true. The second hypothesis was that the lower a person self-esteem is the more time they would spend of Facebook which the results agreed with.

These findings mirror previous research that was discussed in the introduction that formed these hypothesises in the first place. The aforementioned research set out to show that Facebook use has a significant impact on a person in a plethora of different ways. Here we took a small part of their research and looked to expand, or possibly contrast their findings. What was found was in perfect agreement with their research.

These results paint Facebook in a negative light as the findings show Facebook as a booster of negative behaviour that validates bad habits. Almost showing those who use it as either self-obsessed or incredibly insecure. As a counterpoint, this is all in excessive use in a toxic way. It’s not a commentary piece on the people who use Facebook but a report on the detrimental and incessant ways the application can be used. Overall Facebook is an addictive platform that can encourage negative habits and patterns of thought if not limited.

Discussing limitations of this study, there are a few. Firstly, there is the sample group. The people involved in this study were a very specific group. Psychology students and those related. Second, the age group was quite young which isn’t accurate to the reality of Facebook users. Lastly the number of females in the study is over double the number of males, which again does not accurately replicate the Facebook userbase. To overcome this, the questionnaire could be given out on Facebook itself to more accurately obtain the age of users, the sample size could be increased and have a cap for the genders to increase the chances for a more even gender distribution. Future research could investigate the variable order. What is meant by that is, for example, does high levels of narcissism increase Facebook use or does more time on Facebook increase levels of narcissism? This report found a correlation between the two variables but to definitely determine cause and affect isn’t something that can be validated in this report but certainly an opportunity for future study. To conclude excessive Facebook use has a clear negative affect on the human brain but that’s not to say it’s all bad. It was the start of a new age in communication and human connection that we as a race have never seen. But since we’ve never seen anything like this in human history it’s hard to say how deeply it can affect us. Thus, why research is so crucial as we walk forward into a future beyond our wildest dreams.

Quite a while past there was no Facebook and Twitter, individuals were getting data generally from papers, television, and radio. Presently we live on 4IR (Fourth Industrial Revolution) subsequently. It is not difficult to track down data. The two stages give news yet the inquiry is which one inventory is more helpful news.

From my perspective, Twitter is better at giving information. Twitter permits individuals to get presented with outside factors as such Twitter permits us to interface with numerous individuals. Facebook, I can say, we associate with our families and companions. Messages on Twitter are seen by all individuals like web journals, thus one needn’t bother with authorization to get to the data. Even though Twitter began as a help for individuals to post individual updates, it become a basic channel for media sharing. Individuals use it to discuss and connect to the things they’re perusing, watching tuning in to pondering. For sure individuals use it basically for sharing or discovering connections to stuff that interest them. Twitter has along these lines become a central member of the consideration economy, helping individuals spread the media and thoughts they care about. Consequently, the data is conveyed among those individuals.

Numerous individuals accept that Facebook is more helpful than Twitter, just because Facebook is the friendliest stage that individuals use each day. So, individuals think Facebook gives valuable news in light of the fact that it is utilized regularly. People like Facebook, however, Twitter is as yet the best friendly stage that gives helpful news. Many individuals left Facebook in the wake of understanding that Facebook is done giving valuable information. This diminishing number of individuals might be a marker for the difficult future of Facebook. Facebook is done focuses on web-based media for private and social uses, which is alluded to as a major jump given Facebook’s point of convergence in past years. Facebook lost 15 million users. People lost interest in Facebook. As the number of individuals leaving Facebook increases, the number of individuals enacting their records on Twitter increments.

“I like Twitter more than Facebook. Twitter is a great way to deliver and get news. In news writing, less is more, and 140 characters are great. If you cannot grab that headline in 140, then it is not a story. Viewers tweet all the and they tell what stories they like and do not like. It is great to interact with them and get that instant feedback. It is great for the viewer and the journalist”. Tom Llamas says he prefers Twitter since it has more valuable news, Twitter additionally has numerous journalists, as well as professional ones. I can say 90% of the information from the journalist is valuable.

Twitter turned into the best online media for giving valuable news. It has numerous professional journalists, they think of information so individuals accept their accounts. Beforehand Twitter has formed into go to support news from clients during crucial happenings around the world. Twitter has generally grown up and instructed individuals. They share the tales and tweet. Today Twitter has 192 million clients, and the number builds day by day, which shows it pulls in individuals by giving helpful news. Individuals get pulled in by sure perspectives.

So unlike Facebook, I think Twitter is consistently the best-friendly platform that gives valuable news and the number of people using this platform will increase every day. More experienced journalists will initiate their records and give the news to the people.

Facebook: a social media platform founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 which currently has 2.3 billion users. The article “Dear Mr Zuckerberg: the problem isn’t the internet, it’s Facebook” by Siva Vaidhyanathan does not only celebrate the 15 years of Facebook’s existence but also adds to the recent discourse around Facebook. Using a social constructivism perspective, this paper provides insight in how Vaidhyanathan argues that Zuckerberg is gaining more power which leads to moral panic. In this paper, I will analyse Vaidhyanathan’s perspective on Zuckerberg’s position and company, and I will use the concepts social constructivism and technological imaginary to further examine Vaidhyanathan’s perspective in this discourse.

Vaidhyanathan’s perspective

Vaidhyanathan starts off his article by arguing that Mark Zuckerberg has built a platform which not only made him very rich, but also gave him a lot of power. This power is shown in how interaction between users on his platform is based upon his rules, as described by Vaidhyanathan: “your company hosts “networks of people” but they interact on your terms, managed by your rules and algorithms.” Even though he certainly does have control, he denies the amount of power he has over the users: “your post not only ignores your power, it denies it.” Furthermore, Zuckerberg claims that “networks of people replace traditional hierarchies” but these traditional hierarches, according to Vaidhyanathan, have used features of Facebook to do damage to the world while Zuckerberg claims these features have actually liberated the world. Zuckerberg, according to Vaidhyanathan, tries to blame the internet as a whole for the problems on the internet to confuse people. This way he tries to hide that he uses his platform to gain power. Thus, Vaidhyanathan describes how Facebook is the opposite of what the internet was before Facebook by saying “the internet is open, configurable, distributed, and based on open code. Facebook is nothing of the sort.” Concluding, Vaidhyanathan describes in this article how Zuckerberg may be rich and powerful, but he remains clueless about what is going on in the world by thinking that the problem lays with the internet and not with his own platform, while Facebook is not as open, free and liberating as Zuckerberg implies.

Facebook as an element to change society

HELLO Raymond Williams uses the idea of social constructivism to see with what intention media are developed, how technologies are employed by humans and how this has a certain impact on society. A technology, according to Williams, “becomes available as an element or a medium in a process of change that is in any case occurring or about to occur.” Thus, Williams describes how technology can be used as an element in a process of change in society. Furthermore, he describes that technologies “arise from human intention and agency.” This shows that humans, and producers such as Zuckerberg, have agency because the medium is made and used by humans. Therefore, they can use the technology as an element to change society. If we use this concept of social constructivism, we can see that Vaidhyanathan describes how Zuckerberg has built this platform based on his “set of ideals” which shows that his agency behind the platform can be seen as him using technology as an element to change society. Furthermore, Zuckerberg’s agency is seen in the description given by Vaidhyanathan where he mentions how Zuckerberg has influenced society by giving national leaders a platform and power: “your staff actively helped national leaders like Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte assume power.” The human agency of Zuckerberg behind this technology is what changed society. As Vaidhyanathan also describes: “you do realize that you run one of those hulking institutions, right?” By saying this, Vaidhyanathan puts the emphasis again on how Zuckerberg has an incredible amount of power. Therefore, if we use the concept social constructivism, we can see how this power could also be used as power to change society.

Fears for Zuckerberg’s power

By using the concept technological imaginary, we can focus more on society. Technological imaginary, according to Martin Lister et al, “refers us to the way that new technologies are taken up within a culture and are hooked into, or have projected onto them, its wider social and psychological desires and fears.” These desires are projected onto new media phenomena and the “cyberspaces and places of virtual life promised by new media become the new utopias which we reach for.” The new places promised by new media are seen as “a solution to social and cultural ills.” But technological imaginary not only focuses on people’s desires, but also focuses on the dissatisfactions that they are experiencing in their current situation. From this perspective, we can understand what Vaidhyanathan writes about the current situation: “no one who, like me, championed the values of the Internet back before Facebook ruined everything.” This shows a clear dissatisfaction with the current situation in which Zuckerberg is using Facebook to gain power. These dissatisfactions can also become fears for the ‘new’ or ‘better’ media which is the idea of moral panic. As Stanley Cohen describes, “societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A […] person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to social values and interests.” This shows how Cohen describes that societies have sudden moments of panic and fear and these fears people have can also be projected onto the new media phenomenon. Vaidhyanathan shows this moral panic by describing how Facebook is used to do damage to the world: “anti-democratic, inhumane, hateful and violent forces hijacking your server and doing great damage to the world.” Furthermore, they use specific features that according to Zuckerberg are not the problem: “Myanmar’s Buddhist clerisy […] declared a campaign of genocide against them using the very features of Facebook that you claim have liberated the world.” If we use the concept of moral panic, we can see how there can be moral panic about how Zuckerberg’s platform gives people the chance to do damage to the world. As a consequence, satisfactions that were there about Facebook, such as helping people connect and letting them freely interact, can turn into fears about Zuckerberg’s power over the platform.

Conclusion

Siva Vaidhyanathan’s main point in this article is showing how ignorant Mark Zuckerberg is while being able to influence a big part of society. The human agency of Mark Zuckerberg behind the platform Facebook has shaped society because it gives people the opportunity to communicate, but they do not have complete freedom to do so. Furthermore, the hope for a platform for communication can turn into moral panic because of the amount of power Zuckerberg has gained over the platform.

Executive summary-

Facebook is a global technology company that is a well-known provider of online social media platforms. The company is US based and Mark Zuckerberg is the key management personnel. Facebook has been a huge success in online social media and is immensely popular with billions of users globally however in the recent past the company has been facing certain challenges especially with regards to improper use of user data etc. The report aims to study the stakeholders of Facebook and present an analysis on the key stakeholders, the behavior pattern and what needs to be done by Facebook to manage its key stakeholders in a better way.

Introduction to Facebook

Facebook is a US-based company that was founded in the year 2004. The company is into online social media and networking and has billions of users all across the globe today. Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes were the promoters of this company which was started by them when they were still students at the Harvard University. Today the company is a big name in technology and comes in the top four technology company along with Apple, Amazon and Google.

The company’s mission is – “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together”.

The vision of Facebook is –“People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them” (Smithson 2019).

The vision and mission statement of Facebook clearly states that it provide a platform to people to stay connected and share useful information. The company was started as a social media platform but today it has grown huge and hence there have been number of changes and developments to make the company more beneficial and user-friendly. Also a number of challenges have been faced by the management in the recent past.

Challenges being Faced by Facebook –

Negative publicity- Recently it was found that Facebook demographic data was used in a Russian campaign in an unfair way (Studart 2018). This incident has given a lot of bad image to the company and even called for a boycott of Facebook by The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Negative publicity of Facebook is a cause of concern for the company as it has caused users to lose trust in the company. Even employees of the company have been hit adversely by reports on negative publicity. There have been increasing demand to make the company more transparent especially strong governance is needed on activities of its key management Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg (Gaus 2018).

Misuses of public data – There have been a number of incidents of misuse of public data on Facebook. Facebook has been facing issues on falling credibility as people have started losing trust over the use of this social media platform.

Advertisements on Facebook media- Political advertising on Facebook has been criticized in the recent times and needs to be more transparent (Mercer and Macaulay 2018). The advertisements posted on Facebook need to be more transparent in order to make the company safe from legal issues and also to reduce the number of cases of negative publicity.

Ever-changing Technology- Every day new changes are noted in the field of technology, more advanced techniques are required by Facebook to keep their data safe and stay ahead from the competitors. The nature of technology is such that it keeps on changing and hence social platforms like Facebook need to invest huge amount to keep them updated.

Technology addiction- It has been found that Facebook works upon engaging its users by means of attracting the users and keeping them addicted however this model is not good for the users in the long run as it causes social media addiction and should not be promoted. Some technology giants like Apple have joined hands with US and other developed nations governments to reduce the dependency of people on social media (Gaus 2018). Problem on tech addiction and steps being taken to reduce this is another pain area as Facebook management has a lot to think in this area. As a trend in industry now the focus is to bring down technology addiction and Facebook must partner in this.

The strategic direction of Facebook-

Currently the company has faced negative publicity due to misuse of its data hence there is need for the management to critically analyze this area and strengthen the safety of data available on its platform. The advertisers are its major income generators and the recent cases of unfair use of Facebook data has led to decline in trust of this group of stakeholders for Facebook. It is essential that Facebook’s management consider news of its negative publicity very seriously and implement adequate safeguards to protect its data. Also there is need for Facebook to look on areas of corporate social responsibility and reduce the growing rate of human dependence in such platforms which is a challenging task for the management.

Stakeholder View-

Stakeholders are the people who owns stake in a company. Every company has a different set of stakeholders depending on the size and nature of the company. Small companies have the stakeholders like – employees, promoters, suppliers etc. while big companies may have more complex and elaborate list of stakeholders. Stakeholder management is an important aspect in managing any company because it is essential that the stakeholders are updated and happy with the progress of the company. Stakeholder management primarily aims to manage all the key stakeholders of a company this may involve steps like identifying the key stakeholders, studying the behavior of the key stakeholders, laying down company goals and keeping the stakeholders aligned with these goals etc. (Kenny 2012,pp.40-46)

Stakeholder analysis is an extremely important aspect in contributing towards the success of a company. All types of companies need to study the nature and attitude if its stakeholders keep them informed and satisfied by keeping them well aligned and keeping the views of the key stakeholders in mind when making crucial decisions for the company (Thor 2016, pp.9-17).

Stakeholder model Facebook-

Below figure represents the stakeholders identified for Facebook-

Key stakeholders of Facebook-

Users- The users of Facebook social media are the most important stakeholders of the company since they are the ones who actually use the services and make the company popular and successful. It can be said that without popularity amongst the user group Facebook could have never been such a big name in technology hence it is of utmost importance that the interests of the users are given topmost priority in stakeholder management by the company. This group has the ultimate strength to initiate change and force the management to take big steps and important decisions.

The actual behavior of this group is that there is huge popularity of Facebook and this group is promoting the company and its business. However the recent incidents of data piracy on Facebook have made the users more careful in posting information on this media. The users may turn towards other social media platforms in the future and also there may be chance that the popularity of social media may start coming down due to trends in reducing the excessive dependency of social media. The cooperative potential of the user group is that this group supports Facebook and its business currently.

Advertisers- Another important group of stakeholders for the company are the advertisers who fuel money by giving advertisements in the Facebook media. The major source of income for Facebook is through advertisements and it becomes essential to manage the advertisers effectively. The advertisers should be given good services. However the recent incidents of unfair use of data on Facebook and its negative publicity can have an adverse impact on this stakeholder group and the management must take required steps in the interests of its advertisers. There is need for better governance to make things transparent and protect the interests of this group. This stakeholder group is non-supportive as it can easily choose other competitors of Facebook for business and this is a big threat to the company. The advertisers pose high risk for the company as the level of participation of this group is least. The general behavior of this group is non-supportive and needs to be handled with a cautious approach (Freeman 1984, pp.11-75).

Shareholders- The current shareholders of the company are another important stakeholder group as they have invested in the company. This group is generally non-participative and less risky for the company (Freeman 1984, pp.11-75). The behavior of this group is less participative in general. Facebook can adopt an approach of providing regular updates and monitoring of this group. This approach can help in better management of this type of stakeholders.

Employees – Employees are an important stakeholder group for Facebook as “satisfied employees” are the key to success for any company including Facebook. Employees as stakeholders are supportive and pose least threat for the company. (Savage et al. 2011, pp.2-6).The management gets support from this group and it is considered the ideal stakeholder group. Facebook should build a participative environment with its employees this can be very useful in managing the employees. Involving employees in the management of the company can be a useful tool to cope with this group.

Recommendation-

Managing stakeholders of any company can help the company be successful in the long run. It is essential to categorize the various stakeholders based upon the behavior and then take an informed approach to manage the key stakeholders (Freeman 1984, pp.11-75). Facebook’s major stakeholders are its users, shareholders, employees and its advertisers. All of these groups have a different level of participation and pose a varied level of risks for the company if not handled carefully. Companies like Facebook need to take participative, monitoring and collaborative types of approaches to manage their key stakeholders. It is suggested that the company’s like Facebook should carefully study the behavior of the stakeholders and device-specific strategies to manage each group.

References:

1. Freeman, R. E. 1984, Strategic management: A stakeholder approach, Boston, MA: Pitman, pp.11-75.
2. Gaus, A 2018, 4 Key Challenges Facing Facebook in 2019, The Street. Retrieved from
3. Kenny,G 2012,’From the stakeholder viewpoint: designing measurable objectives’, Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 33 Issue: 6, pp. 40-46.
4. Mercer, C and Macaulay, T 2018, Facebook news and announcements, Techworld. Retrieved from
5. Savage et al. 2011, Stakeholder Collaboration: Implications for Stakeholder Theory and Practice, Springer Publication, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 65 No.3, pp.2-6.
6. Smithson, N 2019, Facebook Inc.’s Mission Statement & Vision Statement (An Analysis), Business, Management, Panmore Institute. Retrieved from
7. Studart, M 2018, NAACP Calls for Weeklong Boycott of Facebook and Instagram, The Street. Retrieved from
8. Thor, D 2016, Understanding Stakeholders: Professional perspectives on working with stakeholders, 1st Edition, Bookboon.com, pp.9-17.

News can be defined as professionally produced informed that is timely, accurate, relevant, clearly communicated and fair. Accessibility of news is surpassing than its credibility.

Whereas, fake news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media. Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically, often with sensationalist, exaggerated, or patently false headlines that grab attention (Wikipedia). This means that fake news is intentionally baked news with the purpose of misleading the public. “Fake news is “fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent. (David M. J. Lazer, 2018). Fake news can be defined as the intentional and verifiably false (Kai Shu, 2017).

There are multiple types of fake news including hoaxes, satire, propaganda, sloppy journalism, biased and slanted news, misleading headings and click bait.

Detection of fake news is challenging. Users have no option to verify the authenticity of the content that they find in their newsfeed every time they scroll their Facebook. Facebook also allows its users to share the content on their own discretion without any content verification check. In this way, unauthenticated and unverified content circulates at much speed.

In recent times, prevalence of fake news over Facebook has left its indelible marks on the horizons of power games and behavior of its young users. Facebook is being used to stir the political wave at the lower level or for political engineering at the supreme level of country to influence the youth. Consecutive political upsets in elections around the globe by maneuvering the masses through social bots is anticipating the political parties to use Social media as a tool to change the political preferences of users.

Facebook not only spreads information during the days of disaster and natural calamity but also responsible for prevailing chaos and panic by allowing its user to share, comment, like or retweet the posts of fake information or pictures (Aditi Gupta).

Users used to like, comment, tag and share the posts which gratify their political views preferences regardless of their authenticity check. People find it far easier and less time-consuming to remain informed regarding latest national and international news through Facebook logged on to their mobile phones rather than to sit and watch news bulletin on traditional news sources. Facebook serves an amazing platform to read and watch information or misinformation from around the globe despite the fact that it is not considered as news site. Users have right to upload the content in the form of text, pictures and videos without its prior verification contrary to the traditional media outlets do, before getting the news on-aired. This gives rise to the new phenomenon known as “fake news”. “Fake news” was even named the word of the year by the Macquarie dictionary in 2016 due to its prevalence.

Marking the transformation for news gathering from content listening to content watching, now entered into the phase where every user is content creator. This mushrooming of content creators is resulting in odds like fake news.

Propagation of satire news through pictures and videos are being used against the political opponents and to infuse any social idea among the general public in an amusing way. Pakistani society is now more engaged, intolerant and polarized on political views. The growing repudiated events regarding the fake news on social media is creating trust deficit among the users. Generally, the use of intolerant remarks, jeering comments, abusive and seductive language is very common on Facebook.

In fact, the political party PTI successfully spread fake news against its political opponents. This party is alleged to introduce fake news through Facebook as a weapon against the political opponent. PTI used this weapon well in the sensitive issues like illness of Kulsoom Nawaz wife of Prime Minister of that time. One of the PTI’s operated Facebook page named “PTI Saraikistan”, on 24th June 2018, and many other pages posted that the illness of Kulsoom Nawaz is just an excuse put up by the Nawaz Shareef to delay his cases of accountability. This fake news regarding her illness got such an enormous response that it started to be discussed in number of programs on traditional media.

Later on, pages of the opponent party kept on posting her death rumors to reap political benefits, while she was on ventilators.

Throughout that time, youth of Pakistan showed variety of behaviors through sharing the posts and by posting comments under fake news.

Meanwhile, during the political stimulated campaign run to raise the funds for the dam construction to ameliorate the electricity situation in the country, public came across one more fake news that Shahid khan who is owner of English football club named Fulham has donated 1 billion dollars for the dam fund.

Fake news has caused humiliation to not only personalities but the national institutions as well. For instance, Fake news was circulated on Facebook that Nab has taken notice of the money laundering of 4.9 billion dollars by a political party to India, after days of sharing and posting of comments under the unauthenticated news, it was transpired that NAB has done nothing in this regard. Moreover, it was found that no proof exists to support such transactions of money laundering.

Then, much-celebrated news over Facebook came out that Prime Minister Imran Khan was invited to the Eastern Economic Forum by the Russian President that was later on, denied by the Russian Foreign Office.

The overall above-mentioned scenario created by the circulation of fake news reaching out to the mass audience is resulting in severe behavioral changes in the youth. The sharing trend without verification shows their irresponsible and least concern attitude to dig the true picture. In the same fashion by scrolling down their comments it evidently expresses their arrogance, intolerance, anger and disrespectful language towards the contradictory opinions. This was also observed that due to the circulation of fake news now the behavior of youth is more political polarized than before.

Considering the influence of Facebook on the 2016 US presidential election

In order to consider the influence Facebook had, if any, on the 2016 US presidential election, I will be analyzing the social media site in two different ways. Firstly, I will explore how the existence of Facebook as a platform allowed the spread of information and misinformation (Fake news) during the lead-up to the election. I will analyze how this spread of information affected citizens and if ‘news’ on social media (real and fake) was enough to influence their decisions when voting. Secondly, I will delve into the effect of the collection of data by Facebook. Focusing mainly on the Cambridge Analytica case study in which tens of millions of Facebook users’ data was harvested and used to micro-target individuals in an attempt to influence their decisions when it came to voting. By analyzing Facebook in these two different ways, I will attempt to understand if a social media site can have a real-world effect as immense as influencing who the next president of the United States will be.

As social media has grown massively in its influence, politicians have started to look at it as a more viable way of reaching possible supporters. For example, in the run-up to the 2016 election, Trump spent $44 million on Facebook ads1, which is 12.9% of his total campaign budget2. This significant spending on Facebook ads alone shows how trumps team saw Facebook as an effective way of campaigning and according to one study it increased the probability that a non-aligned voter would vote for Trump by 5%.3

Politicians now seeing Facebook as an effective and even essential tool to reach citizens arguably shows its influence. With two-thirds of American adults now going to social media as their main news source 4, it is no wonder politicians are putting increasing funding into online voter targeting. I would argue Facebook’s influence on society and its citizens is immense and as a platform, it does have the power to influence voter decisions. Out of the two-thirds of adults using social media as their primary news source, 43% of those primarily use Facebook.5 In a study, 21% of a sample of American adults claimed Facebook was the most frequently visited site for politician information, the most popular site after this being Fox News, Fox news is the most popular news channel in America and only 6.3% of this sample said this was their most frequently visited site6, demonstrating how popular Facebook is as a news source. Users can also be targeted by political ads more precisely using the data collected on them by the site, increasing possible influence on voters.

However, ‘truthful’ political ads and credible reporting on Facebook in the run-up to the 2016 election were not the only information voters were exposed to. This period of time saw a large increase in ‘Fake news’, misinformation spread across Facebook regarding politicians and events which were important to the election.

Content posted online is subject to much less scrutiny than traditional reporting and theoretically, anyone could make up a fake news story along with a website and Facebook page supporting it. This relaxed quality control and relative ease in which information can be made to look authentic creates an opportunity for fake information to be easily spread and endorsed, with research showing false information is 70% more likely to be shared than true information (Vosough et al, 2018). Although ‘fake news’ was a common term in the run-up to the election, “Exposure to deceptive messages is not tantamount to belief in them” (Garret 2019, p.2). The question must be asked that even though many Americans may have been exposed to fake news information on Facebook, was it enough to actually influence their decision-making when voting? When choosing to vote an individual makes a choice on what they believe, so surely constant exposure to fake information could change their judgment if these news sources seem reliable?

This has been subject to large debate in the period post-Trump election in 2016, with people arguing exposure to fake news on Facebook played an important role in his success whilst others arguing against its effectiveness. A Study was conducted in the USA in the 1940s called “The Peoples Choice”, assessing the effectiveness of political campaign propaganda on citizens (Lazarsfeld et al 1948). Findings suggest that citizens tend to use a “host of strategies to protect and reinforce their predispositions” (Garret 2019, p12). This study is used here by Garret to argue that the effect of fake information on voters is little due to pre-existing positions meaning that they will maintain beliefs and attitudes even when exposed to propaganda (fake news). However, although individuals such as Garret use this study to support their argument against the effectiveness of fake news, this study was conducted in the 1940s. Since then the world has changed, including how this propaganda reaches citizens, today being through social media, namely Facebook. This change in platform I would argue changes the receptiveness of fake news as individuals are now being targeted much more precisely and much more frequently than they would have been in the 1940s, increasing effectiveness.

Facebook not only provided a platform for information, real or fake, to be shared but also facilitated extreme micro-targeting of voters. I will be focusing on how Cambridge Analytica (CA) used the data from Facebook user’s profiles in order to effectively target Facebook users with political ads in the run-up to the election.

Cambridge Analytica was a data collection and political consulting firm that came to light during the Facebook Cambridge Analytica Scandal. Dubbed a ‘full-service propaganda machine” (The Guardian 2018), they aimed to do extreme micro-targeting of individuals for political campaigns. They aimed not just to target individuals as voters but to target them as personalities, they did this by creating a detailed psychological profile in order to better target them with ads. These profiles were created through the use of data collected from Facebook. Apps were installed by users which gave permission to collect all that user’s data, such as likes, and status updates, and even had the power to read some private messages. These apps not only gave permission to read the data of the person who installed the app but also gave permission to harvest everyone on the friends list information, without them knowing or giving permission. This meant they only had to get the app installed by a few hundred thousand people to reach the data of tens of millions of users, by 2015 CA claimed to have collected data on 220 million Americans7. With this information collected from Facebook they could build detailed psychographic profiles which meant the ads you were seeing would be tailored specifically to you. With the profile, they could learn what kind of messages you would be susceptible to, including how to frame the ads, what topics and content to include, and what kind of tone to write in to get you to engage. They also had enough data collected through Facebook to learn how many times they would need to ‘touch’ you with an advert to change how you think. The reach this company had was scary, to say the least, and it was only possible due to Facebook. Users were unaware their data was being harvested which was then used by powerful algorithms to target them in ways they could not understand. This was a powerful tool which I argue had an effect on voters’ decisions as the targeting of them was so specific and detailed. The use of CA I believe definitely had an effect on the 2016 election, therefore Facebook also had an effect on the election as they facilitated the creation of CA through the data used by CA on Facebook users.8

Social media as a whole in today’s society plays a huge part in people’s lives, with the majority of people in the modern world using social media in some form. People use it to socialise, connect and as mentioned before a large majority of adults use it as a news source. People are constantly exposed to social media and the relative freedom of the internet means anyone can share or create information that has the possibility to be shared by possibly millions of people. Therefore, when attempting to consider the effect Facebook had on the election, it is useful to look at how social media as a whole influences individuals. It plays a huge role in the lives of people today and I would argue it deeply influences people’s lives in many ways, positive and negative.

The information available on Facebook, in some cases, would have little effect on some individuals but to others would have had the opposite. Especially when it comes to fake news, some people will actively question information they are exposed to whilst others accept it as truth. The misinformation spread around Facebook in the lead-up to the election contained “propagandist elements” which likely activated “heuristic rather than systematic psychological information processing” (Khudejah, Khawaja, 2020). As I referenced earlier, during the election Facebook was seen as a political tool to effectively reach potential voters. Politicians saw the possible influence they could achieve through its use, spending millions of dollars on political adverts on the site. Voters were also precisely profiled and then targeted through Cambridge Analytica, a dystopian tool that could predict user actions with the ultimate aim of changing their decisions. All of this was made possible through the use of Facebook data.

I would consider the influence of Facebook significant in the 2016 election, it was a new battlefield for political opponents and allowed the spread of real and fake information and targeting of voters in ways they couldn’t fathom. The heavy usage of Social media in today’s society meant citizens had constant exposure to Facebook, which I think without a doubt had an effect on their decision-making.

1. Garret Kelly – KG., 2019. Social Media’s Contribution to Political Misperceptions in the U.S. Presidential Elections (Online), p1-13. Available from – https: journals.plos.orgplosonearticle?id=10.1371journal.pone.0213500 – Accessed on 301220