Resumo Neste artigo, discorremos sobre comunicação organizacional com os objetivos de evidenciar estratégias acionadas pelas organizações em perspectiva de reduzir e/ou direcionar sua (in)visibilidade nas mídias sociais e de problematizar tais práticas em perspectiva do interesse público. Para isso, acionamos dados de pesquisa realizada por Da Silva (2018), que evidencia um conjunto de sete estratégias empregadas por organizações com atuação no Brasil para gestão de sua (in)visibilidade nas mídias sociais. Complementarmente, em perspectiva do interesse público, evidenciamos que tais estratégias também são empregadas por organizações para fins que não são orientados pela ética e, mesmo, para ações ilícitas.
Nossa pesquisa se insere no contexto dos relacionamentos com públicos nas ambiências digitais e tem como objetivos: refletir sobre as noções e práticas de (in)visibilidade nas mídias sociais e apresentar iniciativas adotadas pelas organizações visando ao baralhamento e a incompreensões de uma situação, enquanto estratégia de direcionamento da visibilidade nessas mídias. As discussões são feitas a partir de relatos de profissionais que atuam em agências filiadas à Associação Brasileira de Agentes Digitais, coletados em entrevistas em profundidade por Da Silva (2018), os quais evidenciam tais iniciativas. Os resultados revelam um conjunto de oito possibilidades a partir das quais as organizações buscam conduzir a visibilidade para enfoques que não embatam com os desejos de posicionamento ou que sejam menos prejudiciais em um comparativo com outros sentidos visibilizados, ou com esse potencial. Tais achados sinalizam a profissionalização em nível sociotécnico, visto que há uma série de alternativas adotadas com o intuito de preservar as organizações. Observamos tais resultados com preocupação e os problematizamos sob a ótica do interesse público, visto que há distorções éticas que podem causar danos expressivos à sociedade.Palavras-chave: comunicação organizacional, mídias sociais, direcionamento da visibilidade, baralhamento da visibilidade, agências de comunicação digitalAbstractOur research is inserted in the context of relationship with publics in digital environments. Specifically, it is related to strategies for directing visibility in social medias, triggered when identifying risks or emerging issues (in society and/or in the media) that may go against how organizations want to be perceived (Da Silva & Baldissera, 2019). We understand that visibility, in its broadest sense, is usually indicated as the most incident desire of organizations in social media (Silva, 2020). However, studies that deal with this theme tend to disregard the fact that being in the spotlight can be negative, especially when the correlated issues and approaches are unfavorable or uninteresting. In these cases, organizations, opportunely, activate a set of strategies that try – along the dynamics of relationship and interaction with the publics – to direct visibility towards something that seems (more) opportune to them (Da Silva, 2018). The purposes of this article are reflect on the notions and practices of (in)visibility in social medias and present initiatives adopted by organizations aiming at shuffling and misunderstanding a situation, as a strategy to direct visibility in these medias. Symbolic interactionism is the epistemic foundation of research. Discussions are based on reports from professionals working in agencies affiliated to the Brazilian Association of Digital Agents, collected in depth interviews by Da Silva (2018), which evidenced such initiatives. The results reveal a set of eight possibilities from which associations seek to lead visibility to approaches that do not conflict with the positioning desires or that are less harmful in comparison with other senses seen, or with this potential. We are referring to the deviation of the focus towards positive guidelines, the generation of facts, the promotion of other approaches based on paid investment, the infiltration of organizational actors in the discussions, the “purchase of audience”, the incidence or hiring of influencers, the competitor imbalance, and the optimization of the desired visibility in search engines. Such findings signal professionalization at the sociotechnical level, since there are a number of alternatives adopted in order to preserve organizations. We observed these results with concern and problematized them from the perspective of the public interest, because there are ethical distortions that can cause significant damage to society. The practices learned show and allowed us to perceive that there are many dynamics that are part of the problem we have discussed. All these paths disturb us. In these cases, there is a certain disqualification of the place (and strength) of the subjects, who seem to be led/perceived almost like “puppets”, in a conception that organizational interventions lead to certain behaviors, which have already been predicted. An action-reaction idea prevails. It is important to emphasize that, if, on the one hand, appropriations of visibility targeting strategies can enhance the communication processes of organizations and their public presence in the sense they want, on the other hand, they can lead organizations to different levels of "omission" and/or concealment of matters of public interest, ranging from moral issues to legal commitments. This situation is enhanced, in the current context, due to the incipient initiatives that aim to observe and, in some way, monitor these (potentially) abusive practices, such as the distortion of information, the dissemination of false news and the act of spreading rumors (Henriques & Silva, 2014). Furthermore, “most of the time, surveillance initiatives end up discovering abusive practices long after the effects of those actions, which implies a research that is always focused on the past” (Henriques & Silva, 2020: 49).Keywords: organizational communication, social medias, visibility targeting, visibility shuffling, digital communication agencies
Our research is inserted in the context of relationship with publics in digital environments. Specifically, it is related to strategies for directing visibility in social medias, triggered when identifying risks or emerging issues (in society and/or in the media) that may go against how organizations want to be perceived (Da Silva & Baldissera, 2019). We understand that visibility, in its broadest sense, is usually indicated as the most incident desire of organizations in social media (Silva, 2020). However, studies that deal with this theme tend to disregard the fact that being in the spotlight can be negative, especially when the correlated issues and approaches are unfavorable or uninteresting. In these cases, organizations, opportunely, activate a set of strategies that try – along the dynamics of relationship and interaction with the publics – to direct visibility towards something that seems (more) opportune to them (Da Silva, 2018). The purposes of this article are reflect on the notions and practices of (in)visibility in social medias and present initiatives adopted by organizations aiming at shuffling and misunderstanding a situation, as a strategy to direct visibility in these medias. Symbolic interactionism is the epistemic foundation of research. Discussions are based on reports from professionals working in agencies affiliated to the Brazilian Association of Digital Agents, collected in depth interviews by Da Silva (2018), which evidenced such initiatives. The results reveal a set of eight possibilities from which associations seek to lead visibility to approaches that do not conflict with the positioning desires or that are less harmful in comparison with other senses seen, or with this potential. We are referring to the deviation of the focus towards positive guidelines, the generation of facts, the promotion of other approaches based on paid investment, the infiltration of organizational actors in the discussions, the “purchase of audience”, the incidence or hiring of influencers, the competitor imbalance, and the optimization of the desired visibility in search engines. Such findings signal professionalization at the sociotechnical level, since there are a number of alternatives adopted in order to preserve organizations. We observed these results with concern and problematized them from the perspective of the public interest, because there are ethical distortions that can cause significant damage to society. The practices learned show and allowed us to perceive that there are many dynamics that are part of the problem we have discussed. All these paths disturb us. In these cases, there is a certain disqualification of the place (and strength) of the subjects, who seem to be led/perceived almost like “puppets”, in a conception that organizational interventions lead to certain behaviors, which have already been predicted. An action-reaction idea prevails. It is important to emphasize that, if, on the one hand, appropriations of visibility targeting strategies can enhance the communication processes of organizations and their public presence in the sense they want, on the other hand, they can lead organizations to different levels of "omission" and/or concealment of matters of public interest, ranging from moral issues to legal commitments. This situation is enhanced, in the current context, due to the incipient initiatives that aim to observe and, in some way, monitor these (potentially) abusive practices, such as the distortion of information, the dissemination of false news and the act of spreading rumors (Henriques & Silva, 2014). Furthermore, “most of the time, surveillance initiatives end up discovering abusive practices long after the effects of those actions, which implies a research that is always focused on the past” (Henriques & Silva, 2020: 49).
The digital environments (re) defines the relationships in/of organizational spaces. We realize that in these spaces as associations they move between visibility and invisibility strategy, considering opportunities and risks that involve them recursively. In this scenario, we discuss possible places/non-places for organizational communication in digital environments and reflect on the crisis management process in associations and the respective 'place' of communication. We start from the assumption that the associations are immersed in a scenario of uncertainty (Morin, 2008) and hypervisibility in which the ordinary daily life becomes, increasingly, transparent and absent of borders for the social environment. With this, the critical hypothesis, which are conventionally called ‘crisis’, become the new common (Bauman, 2016). And it is precisely in times of crisis that communication gains centrality, because “without effective, transparent, timely communication, it becomes much more difficult to control the crisis” (Forni, 2013: 289). We resort to complex thinking (Morin, 2008) and, in empirical terms, to the observation of two crisis that occurred in Brazil involving a mining company, Vale S.A. (Brumadinho and Mariana). To reflect on the (non) place of communication in crisis situations, in the light of the analysis of the cases mentioned, we are anchored in the anthropological conception of place and not place proposed by Augé (2010, 2012). The results indicate that there is a (de/re) territorialization in/of communication in these environments, over the course of events, potentiating non-places (Augé, 2017) and the absence of dialogues. There is a potential for hierarchical communication to give rise to dialogical dialogue (Sennett, 2012), which is not always understood, comfortable and experienced by organizations. Such scenarios, fluid and accelerated, demand openness to horizontal and more egalitarian communication to the detriment of hierarchical, vertical, centralized and centralizing communication. As Santaella (2010) points out, digital environments, such as social media, greatly increase the collective relationships that underlie organizations, propose agency and hybridization, fluid territorialities and 'temporary upheavals', displacement marches through differences, “to communicate other visions and ideas that exclusive ideologies and absolute truths, closed in on themselves like walled cities, do not contain” (Santaella, 2010: 280). On the other hand, that same fascination and seduction in the face of the possibilities arising from this mediatized reality, sometimes overshadow movements of invisibility, silencing and emptying of relationships and interactions. Vale S.A.'s cases also show the dilution of borders and communicational territories, in the midst of mediatized contexts, which cause the unfolding of crises to overflow the geographic locations where critical events take place. If the digital age has ubiquity as one of its features, in which borders between private and public life, between inside and outside, between here and there (Santaella, 2010), we believe that the effects of crisis also become 'ubiquitous', that is, they are everywhere and completely reconfigure the notions of impact and reach. In this context, attempts to make aspects of the crisis invisible become insufficient. The qualitative and exploratory dimensions (Gil, 2021) characterize the nature of the work. The theoretical review was developed from the dialogue between authors such as Augé (2017), Bauman (2016), Morin (2015), Forni (2013) and Wolton (2010), among others.
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