Threatening Face(book)

Introduction
Facebook is one of the most well-known examples of social media, it offers exceptional opportunities not only for maintaining social relationships but also for corporate communication. However, the publically accessible nature of this medium means that any reactions from organizations are visible for third parties. This means organizations have to formulate their reactions very carefully, and that active deployment of politeness strategies would be beneficial.
The research questions were threefold.
1. Which politeness strategies are deployed by organizations in their reactions to messages on Facebook ?
2. Is the choice for these strategies related to the customer’s initial reason for contacting the organization, such as complaints and compliments?
3. Do the deployed strategies have an influence on the further development of the interaction?
Method
This research performs an analysis of a corpus of 540 interactions between organizations and their customers. Organizations from six different industries were selected based on their size within a specific industry. Only interactions where the company replied at least once (as was the case in 49 percent of the interactions), were taken into consideration. Six initial reasons for contacting the organization were coded by two researchers independently, and were further categorized as inflicting damage to either the negative or the positive face of the organization. Based on the definitions of Brown and Levinson (1987: 66) three threats to the positive face (complaint, problem, self exposure) and three threats to the negative face of the organization (request, suggestion, compliment) were defined.
Results
(1) A preliminary analysis of a sample of the corpus determined a selection of the 24 politeness strategies as defined by Brown and Levinson. This resulted in four negative and four positive politeness strategies that were most prominently deployed by the organization: empathize, offer/promise, give reasons and assert common ground as positive strategies, and be conventionally indirect, expressing thanks, apologize and impersonalize as negative strategies.
(2) In most interactions where the negative face was threatened (n=330) more strategies were deployed. This was the case for positive as well as negative politeness strategies following a negative face threatening act. The negative politeness strategy ‘give thanks’ was the only strategy more frequently deployed when the positive face was threatened.
(3) In 8 percent of the analyzed cases customers replied positively to the reactions by organizations, in 27 percent customers replied negatively, and in 14 percent of the cases customers took a neutral stance. In the remaining 51 percent customers did not post any further replies.
Conclusion
This research shows that organizations are already tailoring their reactions on Facebook to meet customer specific needs. When the negative face was threatened organizations deployed more politeness strategies overall, and there was a correlation between the deployed strategy and the preceding face threatening act (FTA). Further research in this area could allow a deeper insight into the handling of face threatening acts by organizations in a digitally mediated social environment and offer a more effective way to improve customer relations.