Public Relations Strategy & Planning: Facebook's Data Privacy Crisis

This report analyzes Facebook's public relations strategy to address the increasing lack of trust related to user privacy and data security, particularly following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It highlights the need for a significant transformation in Facebook's communication strategy to restore faith in the organization's commitment to protecting user data. The report covers a situational analysis, organizational analysis, and analysis of publics, using a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It details the company's goals, objectives, and tactics for improving data privacy, including new protections like data subject consent and encryption techniques. The strategy involves redesigning privacy settings, updating data policies, and increasing interaction with users to make them feel secure while using the platform. The report concludes with an evaluation method to assess the success of the plan.

Public Relation Strategy and Planning

Running Head: Report
Contents
Executive summary.....................................................................................................................................2
Background.................................................................................................................................................3
Research......................................................................................................................................................3
Situational Analysis:................................................................................................................................4
Organizational Analysis:.........................................................................................................................5
Internal Environment:..........................................................................................................................5
External Environment:.........................................................................................................................7
Public Environment:............................................................................................................................7
Analysis of Publics:.................................................................................................................................8
Problem statement:..................................................................................................................................8
Target audience:......................................................................................................................................8
Strategy.......................................................................................................................................................9
Goals.........................................................................................................................................................10
Objectives..................................................................................................................................................11
Tactics.......................................................................................................................................................11
Critical Path plan.......................................................................................................................................12
Budgets......................................................................................................................................................12
Resources..................................................................................................................................................13
Evaluation.................................................................................................................................................14
Appendix...................................................................................................................................................16
References.................................................................................................................................................17
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Running Head: Report
Executive summary
This strategic plan has used to deal with an increasing lack of trust in relation to the user privacy
as well as data security. From past few years, there are number of users who filed a complaint
against data privacy to Facebook. Therefore, Facebook actually needs a significant
transformation in the communication strategy to re-establish trust within the organization’s
loyalty to protect the privacy and data of the user. Protecting the users’ data is very important
and Facebook has implemented the advertising model to communicate with the people about the
goals that they have made to secure the users data. In this report the strategic plans made by
Facebook is discussed and need of communication with the users and stakeholders will help to
state the issues that are occurring within the organization. Cambridge Analytica scandal is one of
the major issues that become a reason for the downfall of Facebook and this issue is also
highlighted in this report. The issues will possessmajor effect on Facebook users, potential
investors, as well as industry commentators. Basically, the issues that are cursing the social
network security as well as privacy issues can only be solved out if the users start taking a
cautious approach to what they are sharing. The hidden issues such as sharing of personal
information to the third party, advertisements on Facebook containing malware, and problem
of scammers who are creating fake profile leads to the lack of communication issue will be
highlighted in this report. Social media actually plays an important role in day to day
life;therefore,the users must feel secure as their personal data has to be kept safe. To
accomplish this plan successfully various goals, objectives, and tactics have been fashioned. At
the end of the report evaluation method is discussed that has helped to evaluate the success of the
plan and a specific research method is identified.
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Running Head: Report
Background
Facebook is one of the famous social networking site which helps to communicate with the
people across the world. Due to this factor millions of people are using Facebook every day to
talk to their friends, relatives and other people. Also, it becomes a best platform in terms of
business. One can advertise their product very easily in Facebook which help the people to rise
up their business through this social platform. Facebook helps to boost up the exposure to the
potential customers. It helps to gather more and more customers for a business man and most
importantly it decreases the cost of marketing. Therefore, more people are connected with
Facebook(Weedon, et al., 2017).
Facebook need a strategic plan to again get on the track where they are before some time. There
are many scandals such as Cambridge Analytica have occurred which puts a downfall in the
repudiation of the company. Therefore, the company must prepare a strategic plan to again win
the trust of their users. Also, the communication gap leads to several problems and to sort this
problem one must need a plan to get their audience back. Building up relation with the audience
is very important and after so many scandals regarding private data now Facebook is introducing
different approaches to be on same position on which they are several years back(Ayres, 2017).
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Running Head: Report
Research
There are several steps that are developed and analyzed in the research. Situation analysis,
organization analysis, external environment as well as analysis of publics/stakeholders were
analyzed in a better way. To find out the strength, weakness, threats and opportunities SWOT
analysis is chosen to be discussed. Apart from that one analytical tool is also used in this report
which explains the need of analysis. Behavioral model is chosen because it helps to identify the
target audience and the need to communicate with them(Thies & Stevenson, 2012).
Situational Analysis:
Strength:
 The main strength of Facebook is to integrate with various websites as well as
applications which become a basic medium of communication.
 Facebook has billions of active users due to which the communication medium gets its
popularity.
 The company provides best user experience in terms of social networking.
 Facebook completely understands the need of users need, which becomes their main
strength and due to this factor more people are connected via Facebook(Sailer, 2016).
Weakness:
 There are many weak clicks throughout the rate of advertisements, which make Facebook
weaker in terms of communication.
 There is only single source of revenue for business man on Facebook and that is
advertisements.
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Running Head: Report
 The privacy issues make Facebook very weak as it puts a negative impact among the
users especially after the Cambridge Analytica scandal(Desale & Borgohain, 2015).
 There is a lack of website customization in Facebook.
 Facebook does not make any strategy to protect the private data of the users.
Opportunities:
 The rate of users on Facebook increases. There are number of users who are using social
media access through mobile devices which become a great opportunity as the users now
are using Facebook and this communicating platform a lot more than the older times.
 Their business has expanded to China and many other countries.
 Facebook is the number one platform which can add more and more sources of profits.
 Facebook provides an open marketplace to their users(Irene, et al., 2010).
Threats:
 The growth rate of online marketing is very slow.
 Privacy issues are identified as major theft in this outgoing platform.
 Due to Facebook application mobile internet users have been increased.
 Facebook created feeble business model(Collins, 2008).
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Running Head: Report
Organizational Analysis:
Internal Environment:
Performance: Facebook is one of the communication media platform, which helps the usersto
do social interactions, and this have factor increase the performance of the company and has
attainedhuge success over the Internet. Female participation rate: The rates of female users are
more than males. About 52% of the females are using Facebook in their daily life. Male
participation rate: About 48% men are using social networking sit Facebook in their busy
life(Sulaiman, et al., 2015).
Niche:Facebook helps to target the audience by making use of different niche. The user can take
advantage of audience optimization option to assure that their post must reach among number of
users and this communication helps a business man to increase their brand awareness.
Structure: The organizational structure of Facebook comprises of corporate function based on
teams, geographic partition, and product based divisions. Company consists of CEO of the
office, chairman, and other involved staff(Wagner, 2018).
Ethical base:Facebook has policies on: data policies, political advertisements, feedback from
global community. These policies help to secure the personal data especially after the Cambridge
Analytica where Donald Trump hires the developers to collect the personal data of the users to
win the elections.
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Running Head: Report
Internal Impediments:Lack of security and Private data is distributed(Lombardo, 2017).
External Environment:
Supporters: There are 1.28 billion supporters of Facebook that are using this communication
medium.
Competitors:
 Google: The share of Google for generating traffic is about 78.65% in the US alone.
 Twitter: About 107 million people are using Twitter and famous celebrities are also
among them.
 LinkedIn: Currently LinkedIn has 470 million users(Bhasin, 2018).
External impediments:
 Increased expenses
 Increasing competition (Frier, 2018).
Public Environment:
Visibility:
 Facebook is used globally.
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Running Head: Report
 Female are using Facebook at higher rate than men.
Reputation:
 It is a strong communicating platform in Public(Vos, 2016).
 Cambridge Analytica scandal has impacted a lot to their repudiation in a negative way.
Analysis of Publics:
Addicted users of Facebook. This public support the company financially, bit apart from that this
addiction increases the popularity of Facebook and make it best communicating platform. Not
only Facebook is used nationally but also it is used internationally. The users of Facebook are
settled across world-wide. Developers try to add up any new feature after sometime. Without the
support of developers there are no teams which can work on adding new features(Chang, 2018).
Problem statement:
The above SWOT analysis becomes a valuable tool in the research potion. From the above
research, the problem among the Facebook users and company is identified.
The problem starts when the company has to face Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge
Analytica was the political firm that was hired by Trump and they have collected about 87
million private data of the Facebook users. They have built up a Facebook app which was a quiz
and with the help of this quiz they have collected the data. Apart from that, they have find up a
loophole in Facebook API which actually helps them out to collect all the private data from the
Facebook friends(Meredith, 2018).
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Running Head: Report
Target audience:
The social presence of Facebook is among 137 countries and this company beats other social
networking sites in about 127 countries. Targeting the audience include age of the audience,
gender, locality, relationship status and even education. This targeting comes under demographic
targeting. Business persons target the core audiences as well as custom audiences which help
their business to grow more in a better way. Facebook helps to reduce the communication gap
among the users. One can simply connect to their family, relatives, as well as friends anytime,
anywhere by this medium. The strategic communication plans target the audience to run towards
Facebook and become one of the users of Facebook(Poland, 2018).
Strategy
The repudiation of Facebook has seen a downfall due to Cambridge Analytica scandal, due to
which the company has to establish some strategic plan to keep their data safe and secure.
Therefore, to maintain the data privacy, new protections are introduced like data subject consent,
new technique for doing encryption such as pseudonymization(Kharpal, 2018).
Other strategy made by company is that they have added many officers in the company who
particularly tasked up with ensuring the company data to regulate it.Effective framework is
generated to protect the users’ data. Facebook has redesigned the setting menu for the mobile
devices and also created a shortcut of privacy menu.Introduce new tool access your information
and data policies will be updated(Gupta, 2018).
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Running Head: Report
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Running Head: Report
Goals
The company completely focuses on creating up the global community.To remove the negativity
of data privacy from the mind of people so that people again start spending more time on
Facebook as they do before so that the company get their profit. To protect the integrity
Facebook plans to provide privacy protected data to all the election searchers so that the scandal
will not occur again. The main goal of Facebook is to connect people with each other(Cornell,
2018).
The company has started making new policies to boost up the traffic on Facebook. Another main
goal is increasing the interaction with the users so that they can feel secure while surfing on
Facebook. The goal of increased profit must be used correctly so that the businessman also gets
profit in their services and products that they are offering to the audience by the medium of
Facebook.To become a primary place to spread popular news and make connections in terms of
social connections or they might be the business connection which helps to grow the
business(Ehrenkranz, 2018).
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