Organizational communication and public interest: strategies of (in)visibility in social media

Silva, Diego Wander da; Baldissera, Rudimar

doi:10.1590/1809-5844202128

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Articles • Intercom, Rev. Bras. Ciênc. Comun. 44 (2) • May-Aug 2021 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1809-5844202128 copy

Organizational communication and public interest: strategies of (in)visibility in social media

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss about organizational communication with the objective of highlight strategies triggered by organizations with a view to reduce and/or direct their (in)visibility in social media and problematize such practices in the perspective of the public interest. To do so, we used data from a survey conducted by Da Silva (2018), which shows a set of seven strategies used by organizations operating in Brazil to manage their (in)visibility on social media. Complementarily, in the public interest perspective, we show that such strategies are also used by organizations for purposes that are not guided by ethics and, even, for illegal actions.

Keywords
Organizational communication; public interest; social media; strategies; (in)visibility

Intention	Strategies	Emphasis	Scope
Diagnosing levels of (in)visibility	Monitoring problematic situations	Identifying risks	Preventing possible crises or the visibility of ‘negative’ guidelines; anticipate the planning of possible interventions.
Diagnosing levels of (in)visibility	Monitoring problematic situations	Following up on crises and their unfolding	Systematization of mechanisms of attention to problematic situations; paying attention to the ‘crisis agents’, and monitoring and understanding the protagonists.
Reducing and/or targeting the visibility	Publicly expressing the institutional stance	Presenting official positioning	In cases of high relevance and incidence or with this potential, countering the versions presented by the interlocutors.
		Answering to requests	Answering to all requests from the public. There is a presupposed relation between the lack of answers and increased reach of crises and ‘negative’ issues
		Being agile and “transparent” in meeting requests	Monitoring social media and qualifying teams for answering in a fast and transparent way. There is a presupposed relation between the lack of answers and increased reach of crises and ‘negative’ issues.
		Being resolute in the face of requests	Solving problematic situations in the shortest amount of time. There is a presupposed relation between the lack of answers and increased reach of crises and ‘negative’ issues.
	Shuffling facts and emphases to generate misunderstanding about a situation or fact	Shifting the focus to positive issues	Offering senses that can conduct perceptions about the organization.
		Creating facts	Creating events or situations capable of drawing attention, direct visibility and generate positive associations.
		Promoting other focuses with financial investment	Making use of the possibilities of advertising spaces to display content, in the available formats and compositions, in order to conduct the focus.
		Infiltrating organizational actors in discussions	Infiltrating agents to influence or change the course of discussions, without being perceived as ‘representatives’ of the organization.
		‘Buying’ the audience	Hire interactants that conduct the circulation of meanings desired by organizations and oppose other perspectives.
		Generating incidence or hiring influencers	Persuading and / or hire influencers to advocate on and make visible concepts that corroborate the organization’s speeches and actions.
		Unbalancing competitor (s)	Deviating from unwanted visibility by employing techniques to (re)direct it to negative aspects or situations of competitors.
		Optimizing the desired visibility in search engines	Using techniques of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to enhance the organization’s versions of facts and themes.
Becoming invisible	Disregarding “negative” associations or mentions	Dodging an announcement or not speaking	Silencing towards an issue at hand and / or to leave the scene ‘entirely’ to avoid visibility, focus and attention.
		Deleting or hiding comments and posts	Employing techniques to remove, from publicly visible regions, comments and posts that may jeopardize the organization.
		Conducting the conversation for private environments	Carrying out conversations in environments not visible to the other parties.
	Restricting visibility to desired interlocutor	Making contacts using anonymous techniques	Accessing data from interlocutors that are relevant for the organization to implement targeted visibility strategies.
	Restricting visibility to desired interlocutor	Selecting audience segments based on their movement and behavior	Establishing groups of interlocutors that are relevant according to specific objectives, needs or challenges.
	Reducing the reach of content offered by organizations	Getting ahead of changes in algorithms and formats	Getting a hold of new rules, parameters and logic of social media algorithms from the relationship with the organizations that control them.
		Exploring content formats and times of the day that do not ‘perform’ well	Using content formats that, due to the logic of algorithms, tend to be unsuccessful in terms of reach and engagement.
		Not applying ‘tagging’¹² 12 Tagging consists on defining keywords (descriptors) that summarize the scope of content. This possibility contributes to a better ranking of a page in search engines, for example. In some social media websites, such as Instagram and Twitter, the visibility of a publication is strongly conditioned by “tags”. techniques	Restricting the visibility of content by not using ‘tagging’ techniques.
		Restricting the visibility to one or a few channels	Reducing the reach of content by not using multimedia.
	Establishing “comfort”¹³ 13 Metaphorically, the idea of comfort stands for initiatives and guidelines that have the potential of getting organizations in more comfortable situations. policies	Regulating the presence of employees on social media	Establishing and implementing guidelines on brand associations that employees can make on their social media.
		Previous definition of themes that should not be addressed	Deciding in advance on which topics the organization will not engage or manifest.

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[1] Diego Wander da Silva

PhD in Communication and Information (UFRGS) e Master in Social Communication (PUCRS). Professor at School of Communication, Arts and Design – Famecos, at PUCRS. Member in the Research Group in Organizational Communication, Culture and Power Relations (GCCOP/UFRGS) e and Member of Research Group in Advanced Studies in Organizational Communication (Geacor/PUCRS).