Exploring situationally inappropriate social media posts (original) (raw)

Social Media or Social Minefield? Surviving in the New Cyberspace Era

Organizational Dynamics, 2015

Ollier-Malaterre, A., & Rothbard, N. (2015). Social media presents both professional opportunities and challenges. It can boost a career or destroy it. In particular, social spaces such as Facebook, YouTube, Google+ or Twitter are where the lines between the personal and the professional are often blurred. How do individuals craft successful social media strategies? To explore this question we conducted interviews, analyzed open-ended comments from over 500 survey respondents as well as over 450 public comments that were made in response to blogs, and examined examples in the public record over a period of four years. We explain how social media differs from offline interactions and propose that individuals who want to leverage social media and avoid damaging their professional reputation should first diagnose their online behaviors to understand which of four main online boundary management behaviors (open, audience, content and custom) they currently use. Then they should choose their goals on social media and in particular decide whether they want to express themselves or to impress others, because strategies to express authenticity or to conduct impression management differ. Third, we recommend that they assess the fit of their desired strategy with their professional context, since some industries or occupations have more stringent norms than others.

Six Common Mistakes to Avoid on Social Media

Social media, riding on the ever evolving Internet technology, has become the fastest, most cost effective, efficient means of communication in this digital era. Interestingly, this has created some serious concerns about how social media is affecting the lives of many of its users negatively. The need to education the public on how to strike a balance when using social media has become essential, and to further that position, this paper provides some guidelines to helps users understand better the ethical issues about social media.

Social Media- A pragmatic Approach: Contexts & Implicatures

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013

The present paper aims at approaching Social Media from a Pragmatic point of view. Implicatures and contexts in social media are also taken into account as linguistic tools that may facilitate such an approach. Communication-the sharing of information, ideas, and thoughts-is a vital part of life for all of us. The different methods that allow us to communicate are called media. A postcard to a friend, a telephone call, and a computer disk holding homework are all types of media. Some of these have developed beyond simple methods of communication to become sophisticated tools, capable of persuading and influencing large numbers of people. It seems that nowadays the techniques for building a Social Media presence have acquired an outmost importance. Our analysis will centre on Social Media sites with a special focus on British newspaper blogs. WCETR2012 2.1. Social media Social Media refers to issues such as blogging, photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Cyworld and they improve and expand the ways people interact both publicly and privately. This implies that the cultural element that is present in these environments is utterly important for decoding and understanding what is going on. Moreover, the Internet environment has its own rules and etiquette where there are accepted ways of behavior that have deep cultural markers which are totally different from the legal markers or from

11-macnamara public relations and the social how practitioners are using or abusing social media

Widespread discussion of interactive social media and social networks enabled by what is termed Web 2.0 has led to discussion of 'PR 2.0' denoting the potential for these new forms of media and public spaces to realise the two-way symmetrical model of communication recommended in Excellence Theory of public relations, but hitherto regarded as normative and impractical by some scholars, or to reconceptualise public relations in some significant way. However, despite considerable excitement surrounding the potential of interactive social media, there is a lack of empirical data on the ways in which public relations practitioners are utilising these media and how they are influencing or changing PR practice. A number of reported case studies suggest that there are grounds for concern that some organisations are attempting to engage in public communication in the Web 2.0 environment using oneway information transmission and a control paradigm of communication characteristic of mass media and Web 1.0. Furthermore, case studies show that, in some instances, inappropriate and unethical practices are being adopted in social media and social networks. On the other hand, there are case studies of some organisations engaging in new productive ways with their stakeholders using interactive social media and social networks. This article reviews contemporary literature in relation to social media and social networks as well as recent case studies to identify their key characteristics, potentialities, and uses, and report findings of a survey and interviews with senior public relations practitioners in Australia investigating their views and practices in social media.

Social media managers as intermediaries: negotiating the personal and professional in organisational communication

Communication Research and Practice, 2019

Organisations are becoming increasingly reliant on social media for realising effective public engagement strategies, as well as managing branding and reputation. Nonetheless, traditional organisational external communications strategies have often proven to be unwieldy in developing and managing social media content. Instead, the development of organisational use of social media has often been reliant on the expertise of social media managers. This article explores some emergent characteristics of social media management in negotiating organisational reputation and management of employee use of social media for both external and internal communication. While substantial research exists about social media in organisations, there has been less focus on the pivotal role played by human 'intermediaries', such as social media managers, to negotiate the fraught ecology of online communication on behalf of organisations. The article utilises interviews with Australia social media managers to discuss their role in negotiating and legitimising new communication practices using social media.

The use of social media in corporate communication and its impact on corporate image

Technology connects people globally and gives them the opportunity to interact and form online social networks. Virtual interactive communication platforms (VICOPs) may change traditional communication processes and companies need to adapt to those new forms of communication. Inappropriate communication might negatively influence the image people form about a company. In online environments, people's interpretive capabilities and preferences in terms of how they perceive a company's identity might be quite different in contrast to the offline world. This research investigates in the new challenges companies face when dealing with people gathering on VICOPs and how this might impact the image they form about a company. Introduction Technologies like radio or television have brought mass means of communication, which changed the way people are communicating and receiving information. The Internet again causes many changes in the way people communicate with one another, and it has changed customer behaviours dramatically. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has capabilities and functions that differentiate it from traditional media and face-to-face communication. The advent of social online media has brought new communication platforms such as VICOPs, where the clear separation 2/8 between interpersonal and mass-mediated communication collapses. People gathering in those spaces are not only looking for information but also socializing and hanging out with their peers. Digital spaces, however, have functions that differentiate it from offline publics. They are (Boyd and Ellison, 2007): (i) persistent, even if posts are rarely written with long-term archiving in mind (there are people joining a platform at a later point in time, reading posts, which have been written a certain while ago), (ii) searchable by anyone at anytime, (iii) replicable and remixable with other content on other platforms, and (iiii) having an invisible audience. Interactive digital media might bring new communication structures and we need to better understand how communication-flows are affected by those changes. Consumers will not overlook communication weaknesses in the online world and inappropriate corporate communication might negatively influence the image they have about a company. Because corporate communication can be emphasised as the interface between corporate identity and corporate image, the conceptualisation of corporate identity and image in digital spaces, is an important part of the study. In order to measure the virtual corporate image formed in VICOPs, new scales might be needed. These scales would enable us to quantify a virtual corporate image and compare it with that of competitors.

Time to bridge the gaps: issues with current social media research in public relations

Social media is a relatively new phenomenon in the field of public relations, and yet it is having a considerable impact on how organisations communicate with their publics and the everyday practice of public relations. Since 2007, there has been an explosion in studies investigating the adoption and use of social media by public relations practitioners. However, despite the popularity of social media studies in academic literature, significant gaps remain in our knowledge of how organisations are using social media. This paper critiques the current body of social media research in public relations, highlighting areas where research is lacking, and suggests future directions for the discipline. Specifically this paper highlights three areas where significant gaps in social media research currently exist: scope, theory application and development, and methodology and calls for more research on how social media is enacted in organisations and how it informs the cultural practice of public relations inside the organisation.

PROFESSIONALISM AND SOCIAL MEDIA: A PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION OF ETHICAL DILEMMAS

Smith, M., Sun, S., Cowley, P. and Bilboe, C. (2018). Professionalism and Social Media: A Preliminary Examination Of Ethical Dilemmas. 10th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, 2-4 July 2018, Palma, Spain. [Online] Available from: https://library.iated.org/view/SMITH2018PRO DOI: 10.21125/edulearn.2018.1640 ISBN: 978-84-09-02709-5 ISSN: 2340-1117 doi: 10.21125/edulearn.2018.1640 Social media has become increasingly popular as a tool for teaching and providing support to students in higher education. However, it may have also raised challenges for establishing feasible ethical standards of how it should be utilised. This is potentially the case when considering issues related to privacy, freedom of information or speech, the right of anonymity, equality and diversity. It appears to be a prevalent issue in line with current pedagogical development, which requires an inclusive design that embeds characteristics of a 'smart learning environment' to satisfy the needs of students from diverse backgrounds. In this pilot study research, we aimed to explore the expectations and understandings of both students and teaching staff, towards their perceptions of what universities do and how well they do it. Questionnaire data and focus groups were collected from students and staff at two UK universities. These students and staff use multiple social media platforms (WeChat, WhatsApp, Viber, YouTube etc.) in their learning and teaching activities. The study focused on their experiences and attitudes towards the use of social media in higher education. Furthermore, institutional social media policies were evaluated according to the expectations and understanding of students and staff. A perceived performance gap can be found in certain areas, such as monitoring students' use of language, avoiding the use of personal information, understanding how the information provided will be used etc. In addition, some misunderstanding and a lack of knowledge towards the use of social media can be found in both students and staff. In relation to this knowledge gap, suggestions were made to improve the protocols or policies concerning the use of social media, as well as recommendations as to what is perceived by students and staff as the best practice .