When it comes to The Social Network, a film about Mark Zuckerberg and the story of how Facebook revolutionized how we communicate with one another virtually. The movie itself was quite entertaining as a motion picture. However, when it came to the character of Mark Zuckerberg’s communication dynamics, the film portrayed his lack of empathy, self-monitoring, and mindfulness in an exaggerated way.
The angle this film takes in telling the story of the origins of Facebook is one of a legislator in the trial of the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, in two lawsuits of the Facebook corporation for intellectual property rights and ownership rights as well. They zeroed in on Zuckerberg’s communication style with the founder Eduardo Severin. “The strained relationship between Zuckerberg and his co-founder, Eduardo Severin, at times seems a lot like a romantic couple going through problems.” Professor Craig Strimmel states about the characters of Zuckerberg and Severin’s relationship dynamic.
The director, in my opinion, chooses to portray their relationship this particular way for many reasons, one being Hollywood blockbuster’s need to have a romantic interest and another to depict the business partnership between best friends and the dynamic working together can create, much like that of a romantic relationship. In the opening scene, the director introduces Zuckerberg’s character in an amplified display of a lack of empathy and self-monitoring in a conversation with his girlfriend that leads to a breakup. With this scene establishing the tone for the viewer of the film, the director portrays Eduardo Severin as the only person that genuinely cares about Zuckerberg to form an emotional link to the empathic-less Zuckerberg. With Zuckerberg’s lack of traits of an excellent communicator and business-minded individual, the relationship between Severin and Zuckerberg becomes much more distant and uncommunicative disruption in their relationship, which eventually leads to suit in which Severin sues for his feeling of robbery of ownership rights from Zuckerberg.
With something as “cool” as revolutionizing global interaction virtually, it makes sense that everyone wanted a piece of the ideal. Considering that the Winklevoss brothers believed Zuckerberg stole their idea, this scenario tells the audience about human perception and gives an understanding of "perception" in communicating ambiguously. With the selection and sharing process of thefacebook.com, the film tells us about in-and-out groups based on premises of Facebook initially only being able to be shared by individuals with a Harvard email address. However, the communication with the Winklevoss brothers and Zuckerberg’s ambiguity with the termination of the brother’s Harvard Connection project, Zuckerberg opened himself up to the second suit for intellectual property rights, but because of his lack of communication, the Winklevoss perceived Facebook as their idea.
When relating the film back to the Workplace Communication text, there is one extended scene that dissolves the image of what the reader thought when its discussing workplace rites; Zuckerberg’s interview with his initial interns. When someone typically feels about workplace advancement they usually picture a professional ideal of workplace rites like when someone in the office gets a promotion or has a birthday there may be a slight gathering or celebration, but when it comes to an initial position interview, there is usually a formal interaction between the interviewer and candidates. However, during Zuckerberg’s meeting, he had the candidates in a competition where they competed against one another in games of industry application and alcohol consumption; portraying the rites of integration in the workplace in a collegiate atmosphere.
The audience can see how the character of Zuckerberg lacks mindfulness when it comes to individuals who do not possess the same intelligence that he holds, a lack of empathy in social situations, and self-monitoring when conversing in intimate and professional relationships. In the portrayal of Zuckerberg as someone who lacked these skills, a communications student receives examples of “real-life” communications when a person posses cognitive complexity and a sense of self-awareness but requires self-monitoring, empathy, and mindfulness when communicating.
By Jared Jones
