Home Depot misuses social media

Many social media are familiar to us, such as YouTube, Twitter, blogs and Google+. These Enterprise 2.0 technologies are not only for personal use, but they are also used by different companies. Different organizations use social media to promote their business and to help them to provide a good service for customers. Social media brings a lot of benefits for organizations, including brand development and marketing promotions. 

There are six main risks, when human beings use social media (Dawson, 2008).

·         Loss of control

·         Security

·         Productivity

·         Reliability

·         Resources

·         Reputation

A good way to use social media can help organizations bring a lot of benefits, but misusing social media will bring some disadvantages to companies. In this blog, we will examine a case study about Home Depot, which is a company that misuses social media. 

About Home Depot

Let’s learn about Home Depot, before we discuss it misusing social media. The Home Depot is an American company, which was established in 1978. Home Depot is the largest improvement retailer and the second largest retailer in the U.S. Consumers can freely visit the Home Depot website. It sells a wide assortment of building materials, home improvement, lawn and garden products and provides a number of services. Home Depot offers a variety of installation and repair services, including bathroom remodelling, garage door repair and more. From the Home Depot official website, it is easy to find that a variety of social media have been used, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blog and YouTube.

‘Misuse’ of social technology

The tweet, from Home Depot’s official Twitter account, @HomeDepot, was part of a “College Gameday” college football promotion on ESPN. It was quickly pulled, but not before people took screen shots of it and it was widely circulated in social media. NBC and CNBC, among others, reported on the Tweet. Home Depot said Friday that it has fired the person and an outside agency that was responsible for the tweet, but did not disclose their names. 

A casual racism is shown on Home depot’s twitter. Even though it didn’t last very long, the response to the offending post was swiftly furious. The damage was done, and people are angry at the obvious racism in twitter. People are easy to misconstrue the photo used in twitter. The Racial discrimination twitter brings a lot of condemnation and it brings a negative effect to Home depot. Racial discrimination is a sensitive problem in all over the world, and anyone should be respected, which is no relative to racial and cultural differences. There are many African-American, and the casual racism twitter hurts their feelings. Not only is the company in America, but it is also in other countries. 

The impact of misusing social media

There are Rogerson andFidler’s 8 Ethical Principles helping us to understand and analyze the issue. 

·         Honor

·         Honest

·         Bias

·         Professional Adequacy

·         Due care

·         Fairness

·         Consideration of Social Cost

·         Effective and Efficient Action

Home Depot shows the bias on race, which has broken the principles. As a big company in America, Home Depot’s twitter makes a huge negative influence. It is not only affecting Home Depot’s reputation, but also the loss of control comments and spreading will hurt millions of Africa-American. The negative influence cannot be measured by money. 

How to avoid abusing social media

Most of company leaders believe that social media and other workplace technology are misused by their employees (Jessica, 2012). Organization misuses social media, which means that the Organization’s employees misuse social media. Therefore, organizations should train their employees to use social media with correct methods. Eight ethical principles should be taught to employees. When misusing social media, organizations should apologize to the public. What’s more, Dundas Lawyers gave some suggestions which we can use on this misusing social media. A documented effective social media strategy can be in place. When similar problems happen in the future, the organization can provide the solutions as soon as possible.

Reference List:

Dawson, R., Hough, J., Hill, J., Winterford, B., & Alexandrov, D. (2008). Implementing enterprise 2.0.

                San Francisco; Sydney: Advanced Human Technologies.

Rogerson, S., & Fidler, C. (n.d.). A practical perspective on information ethics. Retrieved from                  
                 https://www.academia.edu/322961/A_Practical_Perspective_of_Information_Ethics.