Two sides of the coin: Adverse media vs. Social media by Alex Aoun

It’s easy to see why adverse media and social media are often conflated. Both can reflect negative information, spread it quickly, and influence perceptions significantly. In the world of background checks, these mediums are increasingly important. To protect their brands, reputations, and corporate culture, many organizations are expanding their risk profiles of individuals and other third-party relationships. Today, behavior that once was tolerated is no longer acceptable. Evolving attitudes around bias, harassment, discrimination, and toxic work environments mean that reputation can either drive value or destroy it. This compels many organizations to seek a more complete picture of potential recruits, business partners, and other associates. Including adverse media and social media screening is essential in this regard.

‍

Different but Complementary

But the two mediums are not the same, despite the ongoing conflation. Adverse media refers to behavioral misconduct found across multiple sources, typically traditional news outlets or official reports. Often, this misconduct focuses on crime, financial crime, scandals, corruption, and other negative behaviors. Investigative journalism exposing these behaviors involves rigorous fact-checking and a formal publishing process. Simply put, adverse media focuses on what is being said about an individual or an organization online; it’s normally evidence based, including accusations, convictions, and indictments. In contrast, social media is user-generated and freely mixes opinion, news, and personal updates, rapidly spreading opinion, misinformation, and trends in real-time. User-generated social media content is often assessed on sentiment, not evidence—a process known as opinion mining. The key question centers on the emotional tone: Is it positive, negative, or neutral?

‍

Read the full article here, or access the Journal if you are a PBSA member.