This blog post addresses a weekly task on the course ”Research Methods” at Birmingham City University, where I pursue a Master’s of Arts in Social Media. It might therefore be confusing to some. I apologize for this.
The following is a list of bits and pieces found in papers and articles related to my draft research objective. The items appear in no particular order. To limit the length of this post, the texts have been cropped and sometimes rephrased.
Over the weekend, I plan to repeat the exercise and compile a list of stuff found in books and other sources. Next week will be dedicated to the heavy lifting – figure out how all pieces come together in the literature review.
”The risks are uncertain. The courts are in the process of interpreting laws in regards to social media. Until that interpretation is mature (years) organizations operate without definitive guidance. Issues that may arise include: employee and client confidentially, labor relations issues, brand jacking, miscommunication, etc.” – 10 Tips for Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Business
”It is considered a best practice to have two social media policies: one for employees using social media for their job (1) and one for employees using social media in their personal lives (2). The first should define your team, articulate roles and responsibilities, include branding guidelines, and clarify what internal and external policies must be complied with. The second policy should give employees information about what they can and cannot say about your company on their personal site.” – Ibid.
”Privacy law has generally tackled normative expectations with regard to whether an expectation of privacy is reasonable. These normative expectations are likely to undergo rapid shifts as Millennials. those born between 1982 and 2002, continue to enter the workplace. By the time they enter the workplace, many of these millennial employees have online histories that predate their understanding of the word regret.” – California Enacts Law Limiting Employers’ Access to Employees’ Social Media: What Employers Need to Know to Avoid the Minefields (p.4)
”Social networks and technology are infiltrating every facet of our personal and work lives, and human resource professionals, senior leaders and business executives are struggling to understand the full impact of this in the workplace. Some may feel that the explosion of social media and the technologies that support them pose a threat to productivity, security and business culture.” – The workplace engagement economy where HR, social, mobile, and tech collide
”On 4 October 2012 Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that it had more than one billion users who were using Facebook actively each month.” – One Billion People on Facebook
”Classical models of social interaction describe structural components and processes of communication. Structural components are sender, message, channel, noise and receiver. Communication processes are perceived as being linear with the possibility for sender and receiver to change roles.” – Potential of Corporate Communication in New Media: The Example of a Financial Community
”Social media lets you put a human face on your organization, making it easier to connect with constituents who, in turn, can become champions for your cause. In many cases, you want your social media presence to be as personal as possible. But you can run into problems when the lines between the personal lives of your staff and your organization’s goals is blurred.” – Create a social media policy for your nonprofit
”What type of personal information can be posted to your organization’s social media channels? Do you only allow mission-related posts, or can staff express personal opinions or share information about major life events? Defining the boundaries in advance can prevent inadvertent problems, but make sure your staff understands how the policy relates to their own, personal social media use. If they link to your organization’s page, or speak about the inner workings of your nonprofit on their personal pages, their audience might not distinguish their personal posts from your organization’s posts.” – Ibid.
”There’s a fine line to walk here – you can’t enforce regulations for what staff do in their free time, but you can encourage them to adhere to organizational best practices and to represent your nonprofit’s culture and goals. The legal boundaries in this area are evolving almost as fast as the technology itself. If you have concerns about this aspect of your policy, it might be worth contacting your lawyer to make sure you define the risks and find the appropriate way to prevent them.” – Ibid.
”Even if staff don’t self-identify as employees on their Twitter feeds or Facebook pages, in most cases, a good number of people still know where they work. To address that, your policy might train staff on the effective use of social media, and ask them to adopt strict privacy settings on personal pages. You might also encourage a “What would your mother think?” approach to posts. Each organization should decide whether it’s necessary to dictate how personal pages reflect upon the nonprofit as a whole, and make it clear to employees what that separation is.” – Ibid.
”Participatory culture, enabled by recent technological innovations, shifts the communication flows away from a central business-to-consumer model to a consumer-to-consumer model.” – Applications and implementations of new media in corporate communications: An action research approach (p.2)
”When considering new media communication in organizations, three classic questions are particularly relevant: who is communicating, what is the content, and what media are being used?” – Ibid (p.3)
”The once dominant image of an office building filled with people sitting in front of their computers, is inadequate to capture life in contemporary organizations. While a company mainly located in a monolithic center is still common, workforces are now mobile and distributed in an anytime-anywhere work style.” – Ibid (p.4).
”New media enable a world of networked co-creation, which strongly contrasts the hierarchical structure of the one-to-many broadcast paradigm still predominating in much of corporate communications. This is the point of departure for this article.” – Ibid (p.6).
”The evolution of new media is driven by three technological developments: inexpensive online storage; inexpensive and widely available fast broadband access to remove sites; and a proliferation of inexpensive digital devices that can capture audio and visual data.” – Knowledge policy: challenges for the 21st century (p.84).
”For the vast majority of governments across the US, these tools are still fairly new and relatively unexplored. The process of adopting new tools and managing the related changes in work processes and policies is not easy for any type of organization.” – Designing social media policy for government: Eight essential elements (p.2).
”Governments are faced with reinterpreting and applying old policies that govern the use of the Internet or creating completely new policies.” – Ibid (p.2).
”Center for Technology in Government undertook an effort to identify as many government social media policies as possible, to review those policies for patterns in content and approach.” – Ibid (p.2).
”Center for Technology in Government undertook an effort to identify as many government social media policies as possible, to review those policies for patterns in content and approach. Eight essential items for a social media policy were identified: 1) employee access, 2) account management, 3) acceptable use, 4) employee conduct, 5) content, 6) security, 7) legal issues, 8) citizen conduct.” – Ibid (p.2).
”Publicly available social media sites started within people’s private lives, and were mainly used to connect with friends and family. However, as more and more people started to recognize the simplicity and value of communicating through social media sites, the use expanded to the work place.” – Ibid (p.3).
”We found three distinct ways employees are using social media tools while at work: 1) for official agency interests, 2) for professional interests, and 3) for personal interests.” – Ibid (p.4).
”The lines between professional and personal or professional and official agency uses are rather fluid.” – Ibid (p.4).
”Governments are still trying to figure out how to put boundaries around an employee’s personal, professional and official agency uses. Each use has different security, legal and managerial implications and agencies are tasked with striking a balance between using social media for official agency interests only and allowing all employees access for personal and professional interests.” – Ibid (p.4).
”The open and community-based aspects of social media can be a huge benefit for nonprofits looking to reach out to new audiences and engage their existing vase, but sometimes it can seem that no one knows the right way to use each channel, or where the lines are drawn.” – The Nonprofit Social Media Policy Workbook (p.6)
”In practice, ‘social media policy’ could refer a detailed set of procedures for using social media, a legal document written by lawyers, a high-level vision document, or pretty much anything in-between.” – Ibid (p.8).
”Where’s the line between personal and professional in your organization? Think through the scenarios below:” – Ibid (p.24).
”What can you request of staff in terms of their personal accounts? As an organization, do you actually have any right do define what staff should do with their personal accounts?” – Ibid (p.25).
If you have made it this far, please consider leaving a comment with tips on reads about how organizations have put in place policies to regulate how staff use social media. Would also be great to read examples of policies you like. I know Chris Boudreaux’s list is exhaustive, but it is also heavily focused on American companies. If you have lots to share, you can also email me. Thanks!
