Social Media Sites: A Useful Tool For Exposing Violent Employees?
Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become fertile grounds, unfortunately, for expressions of hatred and intentions to commit acts of severe violence. Indeed, just one day after passage of healthcare legislation, a news headline read: “Angry Over Health Reform Vote, Conservative Blogger Posts Twitter Call for Obama Assassination”. As workplace violence has become all too frequent with horrific news reports such as the alleged University of Alabama professor shooting and killing several coworkers, methods of advance detection and prevention are of vital importance. Indeed, as there are some reports that workplace violence is on the rise since the onset of the recession, it could be a potentially life-saving red flag to know when one of your co-workers begins "twittering" about his or her violent intentions.
Traditionally, employers have had to rely on old-fashioned means of detecting violent propensities of their employees, by observing changes of behavior including: displays of anger, aggression, anti-social actions or threats, despondency, foul language, disorganization, loss of interest, and/or complaints or word of mouth reports from co-workers. Electronically, employers with email monitoring policies and practices could also be in a position to detect anyharassment or violent intentions expressed via email or instant messaging.
In this regard, two New Jersey cases illustrate that a duty may arise to prevent co-worker harassment or injury to another when the employer knows or has reason to know that such harassment or threats are taking place via the company's internet. See e.g., Blakey v. Continental Airlines, 164 N.J. 38 (2000) (involving a pilot's claims for sexual harassment and defamation stemming, in part, from a co- worker's postings on an electronic bulletin board on company's internet). Similarly, in Doe v. XYC Corp., 382 N.J.Super. 122 (App. Div. 2005), the court held that an employer with notice of an employee viewing child pornography on the internet has a duty to investigate and act to avoid third-party injury. Thus, Doe suggests an additional step for employers to not only investigate reports of internet misconduct, but to discipline employees and report the dangerous internet activity to law enforcement authorities.
With the explosion of social media sites, it is also possible for any person with internet access to visit these sites and view public postings or conduct search queries for keywords, people, places, topics, etc. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal recently reported on some companies regularly searching social media sites during recruiting, and ensuring confidentiality of business deals, trade secret protection, employee attendance, and loyalty. Similarly, I previously blogged here about social media in the context of sexual harassment and hostile work environment.
To get a flavor of some of the discourse occurring, I ran simple keyword searches relating to "co-workers" on the publicly available pages of these sites. The search results were voluminous and ranged from benign banter to disturbingly unequivocal expressions of intent to severely harm another person. Below are some publicly viewable examples of real tweets and status updates from March 23, 2010 (the persons' usernames have been deleted):
Publicly Viewable on Twitter
xxxx: So one of my co-workers is about __ close to getting smacked in the mouth #imjustsayin
xxxx: Saw the supervisor come so I moved my chair back..chair hit him in the stomach..#thuglife
xxxx: I want to shoot my coworker iin his foot
xxxx: If i had a gun i would shoot my professer
xxxx: Im bout to shoot this ____ up…
xxxx: i jus wanna stab somebody
xxxx: I wish I could just stab anyone that annoyed me in the face.
xxxx: i wanna stab this professor!!!!
xxxx: Throwing things at the head of another co-worker can have repercussions . . .
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