A Framework and Call for Scholarship on “The Dark Side of Social Media”: An Abstract

Abstract

While there are many social and economic positive consequences of social media, the idea here is to focus on the dark side of social media facing consumers and brands via social media in three areas: digital drama and digital over-engagement, consequences to consumers, and consequences to brands. Digital drama refers to occurrence of and reactions to negative online consumer behaviors such as sexting, cyberbullying, fear of missing out, abuse, and related online happenings. Digital drama can occur with other forms of technology; digital drama can occur with e-mails, list-serves, and texts but seems especially salient with social media. Digital drama entails topics such as revenge pornography, cyberbullying body image/body shaming, and trolls. A related topic is digital over-engagement, or an online behavior resulting from a consumer’s thoughts, emotional connection, and intrinsic motivation to interact and cooperate with a brand or its community members in a social media setting. These topics that fall under the umbrella of digital over-engagement or digital drama may bring some (largely unintended) consequences to consumers and brands. For instance, social media has been associated with topics of addiction, self-authenticity, emotional intelligence, and issues with self-esteem. Consumers are in control with social media when there is a corporate misstep or corporate mistake. Consumers have a voice to call companies out on a mistake such as tone-deaf ad or marketing campaign. The consumer voice to companies on social media is in a more public and interactive way than the letters or phone calls of the past. The pace becomes quicker and corporate reactions to missteps have become faster. For instance, Pepsi pulled an ad within hours of airing it, and the speed of this decision may relate with the influx of consumer reactions and disdain on social media. This interactive nature, exposure to networked audiences, and speed in corporate reaction times are a massive change in marketing. Collectively, it is crucial to acknowledge that there is a dark side to social media in addition to its many positive virtues. These virtues and dark side topics apply at times to both consumers and brands, and as such, the working framework here includes a consumer level and a brand/business/organization level. As such, here are three research questions that may spark continued scholarship:

• What are antecedents and consequences of digital drama or digital over-engagement (consumer or brand level) with other consumers or brands on social media platforms (digital drama and digital over-engagement)?

• What are short-, mid-, and long-term psychological or physical consequences to consumers’ social media use (unintended consequences for consumers)?

• What public relations strategy/social media tactics are best for brands when the business or organization is in crisis (unintended consequences for consumers)?