Social media and dismissal: Towards a reasonable expectation of privacy?
Open Access
- 29 August 2017
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Journal of Industrial Relations
- Vol. 60 (1), 119-136
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0022185617723380
Abstract
For over a decade, industrial tribunals have been adjudicating unfair dismissal cases concerning employees’ use of social media outside work. Early analyses suggested that tribunals tended to consider social media a public domain, in which communication constituted a broadcasting to the world at large, an interpretation, scholars argued, that would facilitate a shift in the boundaries of the employment relationship towards greater employer control of employees’ private lives. Has this continued to be the case as social media has become an ever more entrenched social phenomenon? Through an examination of decisions by the Australian Fair Work Commission since the dawn of Facebook in 2004, with a particular focus on more recent judgments, this article argues that the reasoning of industrial tribunals may be changing towards recognition of a reasonable expectation of privacy for employees when using social media in their private lives. This has implications for the shifting boundary between employees’ public and private lives, suggesting a need for continuing and comparative analysis of industrial tribunal decisions involving employee social media use.Keywords
This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit:
- Use of social media at work: a new form of employee voice?The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2016
- Social media dilemmas in the employment contextEmployee Relations: The International Journal, 2016
- Chilling times: social media policies, labour law and employment relationsAsia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 2015
- Free Speech Rights at Work: Resolving the Differences between Practice and Liberal PrincipleIndustrial Law Journal, 2015
- Offensive Expression and the WorkplaceIndustrial Law Journal, 2014
- It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked TeensJournal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 2014
- The ‘Privacy Paradox’ in the Social Web: The Impact of Privacy Concerns, Individual Characteristics, and the Perceived Social Relevance on Different Forms of Self-DisclosureJournal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2013
- Managing electronic communications: a new challenge for human resource managersThe International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2011
- From Facebook to Mug Shot: How the Dearth of Social Networking Privacy Rights Revolutionized Online Government SurveillancePace Law Review, 2011