Many corporations today have gained power through social media. It increases their exposure in its algorithms, assists them with self-promotion, and preserves their positive reputations. As a result, social media can cause us to be biased towards companies. After all, companies use it to place themselves in a positive frame and encourage people to support them. This is an example of how bias affects perception, particularly the perception of companies.
This should be a widespread concern, because many people use different forms of social media, as revealed in the chart below:
Source: Pew Research
In this article, we will look at multiple ways corporations have power from social media.
Corporations Have Power on Social Media Through Promotion
Corporations have power on social media since they use it to promote themselves in several ways. For example:
- They use it to expose themselves to more people
- They use it to interact more with their audiences
- They use it to learn about their audiences, which will help them appeal to their audiences.
Corporations have gained power on social media by using it to promote themselves. One way they do this is by using it to expose themselves to more people and increase engagement with their audience. Social Media as a Catalyst for the Development of Tourism Business: A Study of the Tourism Industry of Pakistan, describes this process:
“Sharing opportunities for tourism experiences on social media provides a chance to reach out to more consumers which ultimately encourages them to visit these places (Wong et al., 2020). Highlighting the significance of social media usage, Sahin and Sengün (2015) mentioned that tourism companies use social media to interact and communicate more with their audiences since the internet has provided an opportunity to interact, comment, & like the post.”
Through social media, more people will learn about a company, and therefore more people will want to use their services. The company is also able to interact with its audience on these platforms.
Social media also assists with company promotion since a company can use it to learn about its audience. Communication Channel Preferences: A Descriptive Audience Segmentation Evaluation describes, “Similarly, tailoring communication has been extensively studied and refers to identifying specific characteristics of an individual and then developing messages that address the needs and interests of the individual.” Social media lets a company get information about its audience’s demographic, beliefs, and interests. If a company can understand these, and therefore what messages its customers will respond to, then it will do better at appealing to them.
Corporations Have Power on Social Media Through Algorithms
Corporations have had multiple means of gaining power through social media algorithms:
- Companies retarget people; their ads will appear more on social media for people who have engaged with them online.
- Social media lets companies track the effectiveness of their retargeting campaigns, which teaches them how to best retarget people.
Companies also have power over social media algorithms. Content from companies appears often across social media feeds, therefore prioritizing them.
One example of this is retargeting. Gupta explains what retargeting is in Social Media Retargeting: Opinions, Clicks, and Conversion:
“Retargeting is the right advertisement for the right person as it is a personalized form of an online advertisement based on customers’ browsing history. A database is generated when a customer visits any online retailer. Pixels or cookies-based tracking technologies record navigation done by customers. After analyzing the viewed but not purchased range of products with a mathematic algorithm, real-time and behavior-based advertisement is displayed to potential consumers on different social media platforms. It acts as a reminder tool to bring customers back to the online retailer’s website and push them into conversion.”
If someone engages with a corporation online but does not buy their goods or services, then the person will receive ads on social media for that corporation. The purpose of this is to entice the person to resume engagement and make a purchase.
Social media also allows companies to observe their effectiveness when they retarget potential customers. They do this via A/B testing, which Gallo’s A Refresher on A/B Testing defines as “a way to compare two versions of something to figure out which performs better.”
The importance of social media in this kind of testing is demonstrated in Social Media Optimization through A/B Testing for Brand Awareness: A Reach Analysis of A/B Creatives:
“A/B testing was used to compare the performance of two visual creatives on Facebook…The researcher selected an audience on Facebook…The reach and engagement metrics were analyzed for each creative to assess their effectiveness…The study emphasized the significance of A/B testing for social media optimization. Content creators and marketers could benefit from the A/B testing to see the result before launching any campaign.”
Social media can play a crucial role in the A/B testing conducted for retargeting since it has data that reveals the levels of engagement with a company’s content.
Corporate Power Changes Media Bias in Favor of Companies
Media bias often leans towards corporations, as media outlets frequently adopt a strategy of either positively promoting a company or deliberately omitting their failures or shortcomings. This concept is illustrated in the study, “Advertising Spending and Media Bias: Evidence from News Coverage of Car Safety Recalls“, where it states:
“… newspapers tend to underreport recalls involving their advertisers, particularly the more severe ones. For instance, the Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, faced criticism for its scant coverage of tax scandals implicating Swiss bank HSBC, one of its principal advertisers (Plunkett and Ben, 2015).”
In situations where their advertisers or corporate partners could be adversely affected, news outlets may refrain from publishing negative stories, such as those concerning recalls and scandals. Consequently, the bias in several media outlets can be traced back to their relationships with advertisers.
The bias in favor of companies also originates from the power that companies hold over news organizations. The same article describes how “…commercial media outlets rely heavily on advertising revenues and have an interest in maintaining a good relationship with their advertisers. When negative news about an advertiser emerges, an outlet may consider under-reporting to keep a good relationship with advertisers.” Companies hold authority over outlets because outlets depend on them for money. To keep these sources of money, outlets maintain a positive relationship with their advertisers. They do so by, as mentioned before, not acknowledging negative news about the advertisers.
New organizations’ bias toward corporations can also cause people outside these organizations to be biased toward them. This is explained in The Influence of News Coverage On Corporate Reputation, which states that “…tone has a significant positive effect on reputation. Thus, as people are exposed to relatively more positive than negative news about a corporation, their opinions about the corporation become more positive.” As a result of their bias towards a company, a news source will create a positive portrayal of the company. This causes news consumers to view the company positively as well.
In addition, social media gives corporations some methods for controlling their images:
- Companies can directly and quickly communicate with potential customers: This teaches companies how to improve, and makes customers feel more valued by companies.
- Social media assists companies with crisis management: Examples of other companies’ crises that are displayed on social media teach a company how to address its crises.
In addition, social media assists companies with maintaining positive reputations. One reason for this is that it allows direct communication between companies and individuals. In Reputation Management: Misuse of Social Media by Customers and Consequences on the Marketing Strategies of Firms, Erdogan explains that by communicating with people, corporations will “…start listening to the customers and their requests, instead of advertising the product or service one is offering…have a sympathetic ear for customer feedback…put the criticism into practice.” The criticism that companies directly receive through social media can teach them how to improve, and therefore how to behave more favorably.
Erdogan later notes that direct communication enables corporations to treat each customer “…like a ‘friend’ who is trustworthy, this makes the customers feel relevant and like very important ‘human beings’ who have the right to complain, talk or request.” This gives companies a more positive image since this increases people’s trust in them, and makes people feel like they matter to the company.
Lastly, social media boosts companies’ power by assisting them with crisis management. One way this is demonstrated is in Corporate Reputation and Crisis Management in Social Media: The Patiswiss Case Study, where Armutlu analyzes the response of Patiswiss after someone complained about the quality of its chocolates:
“Businesses are supposed to show empathy and concern…There also has to be transparency…Patiswiss CEO defensively attacked the criticism with no contours of empathy and transparency at all.”
Based on the communication between the critic and the CEO, which can be accessed since it occurred on social media, Armutlu points out several flaws in the CEO’s behavior, including a lack of empathy, concern, and transparency. In this way, social media can show how some companies act poorly in response to a crisis, which teaches other corporations what not to do during their crises. The fact that corporations are taught how to handle crises well makes them more able to preserve their reputations.
Social media has given corporations a significant amount of power. There are different demonstrations of this: social media promotes companies, exposes more people to them through algorithms, and helps them maintain good reputations. As a consequence, people may become subject to media bias in favor of companies, without knowing how their perceptions of companies might be distorted. Therefore, it is important to understand and identify how social media empowers companies whenever we go online.