According to our authors, "To assume that everyone can be a personal friend overruns the reality of personal differences that propel us to varied associations with others. To assume that our personal commitments should be shared by everyone overruns the reality of individual choice. One cannot force the public area to be excessively private, and one cannot force the private to be disproportionately public" (107).
I thought that this was a very interesting assertion that is applicable to social media use today. For example, consider how many of your coworkers (people who are largely in the public sphere) you are friends with on Facebook. Depending on where you work and who you work with this answer might range from very many to very few. Do you think that it is normal and perhaps even expected to friend coworkers on Facebook?
In my work experience, it has become expected that if you enjoy working with someone then you should friend them on Facebook. There are pros and cons to this social arrangement, as you often learn more about somebody when you spend virtual time with them online than you would like to know, which our authors would describe as a blurring of public and private discourse (106). However, the pros to such an arrangement is that this sharing of private information with someone you largely spend time with in a public place allows you to better understand your coworker's reactions to various situations. For example, I might know about private events that occurred in that person's life, such as a recent break-up, which would help me to understand my coworkers lack of enthusiasm about something at work that they normally enjoy.
Another example of the blurring of public and private spheres is when an employer encourages their employees to use a social media platform to communicate about work-related information. I experienced this at an internship where I was required to communicate with my fellow interns on Facebook in order to complete the internship program. I consider this to be an instance of the blurring of the public and private spheres because I was viewing work-related announcements in my personal news feed, which made me think about work when I was looking to immerse myself in the private sphere.
What are your experiences with social media and coworkers? Do you think that the blurring of public and private spheres online is more problematic or beneficial?
I work in a grocery store where I get along with nearly every single on of my co-workers, and, as such, many of us are Facebook friends with each other. In my real life example, there are definitely benefits and drawbacks.
ReplyDeleteFor example, it's nice to get to know co-workers better, on your own time, without customers around. There are plenty of things that I have been able to learn about co-workers that have enriched my experience working with them. If I get to know them better, it may make it easier to work with them, or to know if I want to get to know them outside of work (a notable example is a co-worker who I bonded with over our mutual love of cats who turned out to be super awesome in nearly every regard).
I also believe that perspective into their lives can be helpful; for example, I have missed a lot of work lately due to a chronic illness. I found an excellent vlog that someone else who suffers from the same chronic illness posted that explains the situation with humor and candor.
I chose to share that video, and as such, co-workers were able to passively learn about me and my issues which will hopefully create a healthier workplace for all of us. While I don't mind my co-workers knowing this, and believe it could be beneficial to team morale, there is no way I would have talked about it around customers.
So, in that particular instance in my life, being friends with co-workers on social media was helpful. However, there are unspoken guidelines that we follow in our culture at work- while I am Facebook friends with some of my supervisors and one of my immediate bosses (and a team leader from another department), I would not be friends with my team leader or any of his bosses.
In short: it's beneficial, but with boundaries in place. We have got to pay attention to the non-media culture of where we are, too.