Amplifying Employee Voice? Situating Social Media in the Organisational Voice System

Voice mechanisms in organizations provide an opportunity for employees to have a say about their work. As new digital mechanisms, such as social media (SM), are being increasingly adopted by organizations for knowledge sharing, employee engagement and general communication, it is important to consider the extent to which SM may facilitate employee voice. The limited attempts to examine SM and employee voice have mostly focused on identifying the contextual factors that could promote constructive voice on SM. The extant literature does not explore how SM features may (or may not) facilitate all types of voice, such as those which promote employee interests. Adopting an affordance lens, this paper answers the call of voice scholars to explore the potential of SM as a voice mechanism by discussing the perceived value of different SM features for different types of employee voice content. The paper brings together SM and voice literature and explores how different SM affordances may potentially facilitate certain voice content more so over others. In doing so, future directions for research of voice on SM are also discussed.

Background: Social media (SM) affordances and knowledge transfer (KT) culture permit sense-making, sense-unmaking and insights into an organisational performance improvement strategy. The article provides an analysis of SM affordances and how they enable sense-making. Objectives: The purpose of this article was to explore how SM can facilitate effective KT in an innovative business environment (IBE). The question inspiring the article is: How can the use of SM facilitate effective KT in an IBE? Method: Twenty online interviews with experts from various organisations were used to gather qualitative data and make sense of the key concepts. Data extracted were thematically analysed using ATLAS.ti software. Results: Mainstream academia concentrates more on the operational usefulness of SM, and not much is concentrating on how SM affordances facilitate social, organisational sense-making and KT from strategic level expert’s perspective other than the operational level. Conclusion: Social media affordances are in the form of media richness, cost reduction, the meta-knowledge in community of practice, conversation frame-clues interlink, creativity, editability and creativity. The conversation leads to productive dialogue (PD) and KT. Contribution of the research: The sense-making theory enables reconceptualisation of how SM affordances facilitate social, organisational sense-making and KT. Sense-making and KT are shaped by individual cognition, absorptive capacity, technology perceived ease of use (PEOU) as well as usefulness and the environment. The research is supportive to information and communication technology researchers and novice researchers in developing new knowledge and KT measurement and SM management strategies. This study is unique compared to the existing literature because of its exclusive and innovative approach regarding participant’s selection, data collection and methods.

Goal and objectives of the dissertationGoalTo develop a framework of customer engagement through humour on social media, which embraces both firm-initiated activities and customers' reactions in the context of destination marketing on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.Objectives1. To develop a taxonomy to systematically classify and map firm-initiated humour strategies aimed at engaging customers in social media conversations.2. To describe and categorise the respective customer responses to these persuasive firm posts.MethodologyRhetorical analysis was adopted as the methodology to allow for an in-depth examination of customer engagement on social media from a persuasion perspective. Specifically, this research adopted the rhetorical triangle, comprising of author, text and audience (Burke, 1969), to analyse firmcustomer conversations involving humour. The author position in the triangle refers to both firms who initiate humour posts and customers who publish comments. The text consists of messages as well as social media-afforded modalities (e.g. photos, hashtags and emojis). The audience includes firms, specific customers and general social media users at which the posts and subsequent comments are directed. Data collection for taxonomy development in the main study occurred from 25 October 2014 to 28 December 2014. It included two phases: 1) selecting all firm-initiated conversations that took place from 10 September 2014 to 10 October 2014; and 2) selecting firm-initiated conversations involving humour (n=271) and respective customer responses (n=1013). Following the same process, additional data, including 25 firm-initiated humour posts published in March 2016 and respective customer verbal responses (n=158), was collected to confirm the taxonomy. A mixed approach to taxonomy development, including three-phase data analysis, was used. The first phase - conceptual to empirical analysis - identified firm-initiated humour strategies and respective consumer responses by applying the conceptual framework developed on the basis of persuasion and humour theories. The second phase - empirical to conceptual analysis - analysed the leftover data. The third phase - re-conceptual to empirical analysis - applied the expanded conceptual model to new data and was able to confirm the established taxonomy.ResultsFirst, the findings reveal a large array of social media-afforded verbal and non-verbal interactions through which firm-customer conversations are structured and sustained. Second, various types of firm-initiated and customer-responded humour posts/comments were identified, and evidence of humour coconstruction on social media was revealed. Third, distinct rhetorical appeals embedded in firm-initiated humour were found, depicting the means through which firms, and in particular destination marketing organizations, use humour to generate customer responses. Finally, interesting patterns of multimodal forms of text were found in these conversations, shedding light on social media-afforded multimodalities.Theoretical ConclusionsThe research findings are significant in that they make an original contribution to social media marketing and tourism marketing literature, as well as to the four theoretical streams of 1) customer engagement; 2) humour; 3) persuasion; and 4) social media affordances. The strength of the research lies in developing important conceptualizations and in presenting taxonomies that advance our understanding of customer engagement on social media and provide critical support for future research in these areas.Practical applicationsGiven the increasing challenges of marketing on social media (Gretzel and Yoo, 2013), knowledge about engaging customers on these platforms is critical. The results offer strategic implications for social media marketing, with a specific focus on destination marketing. This dissertation also has wider implications for the implementation of cross-cultural communication and value co-creation in the context of social media marketing. …

This paper reviews existing research on self-presentation in social media in order to inform future research. Social media offer seemingly limitless opportunities for strategic self-presentation. Informed by existing self-presentation theories, a review of research on self-presentation in social media revealed three significant context and audience variables that were conceptualized in a model. First, three affordances of social media – anonymity, persistence, and visibility – were discussed, as research has revealed the moderating effects of these affordances between self-presentation goal and the self-presentational content shared in social media. For example, one might expect that social media users are more likely to present their actual selves under conditions of less anonymity, more persistence, and more visibility. On the other hand, the freedom associated with more anonymous, less persistent, and less visibility social media may lead to idealized self-presentation. The second finding revealed the impact of other-generated content in the form of likes, comments, tags, and shares on social media users’ self-presentation content, mediated by how they choose to manage such content.The third theme concerned the moderating effect of context collapse on the relationship between goals and self-presentation content. The composition of an impression manager’s audience from one platform to the next varies across social media platforms, impacting and often complicating the attainment of self-presentation goals in the midst of merging networks of people. Social media users have adopted varying ways to navigate the complexities of context collapse in their pursuit of self-presentation. Although we have learned much from this body of literature, a more comprehensive theory of self-presentation in the hypermedia age is needed to further advance this area of research.

Social media affordances and fatigue: The role of privacy concerns, impression management concerns, and self-esteem

We examined employee voice as the mediator in the social media use–employee innovative behavior relationship in the current Web 2.0 age. We used structural equation modeling to test this mediating role with 178 employees of a large enterprise in China. The results showed a significant positive relationship between social media use and employee voice, and between employee voice and innovative behavior, and a positive but not significant relationship between social media use and employee innovative behavior. Results also supported a full mediating role for employee voice in the social media use–employee innovative behavior relationship. Our findings extend prior research and suggest some mechanisms of social media use. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Social media has become an increasingly important tool for employees to communicate and share their opinions. Yet, there are still some gaps in the social media use research. We investigated leader–member exchange and voice efficacy mediation of social media use on employee voice behaviours. The study sample comprised 359 Chinese environmental protection employees and their 79 leaders. PROCESS model regression results showed that social media use had a significant positive influence on leader–member exchange, employee voice efficacy, and on voice behaviour. Both leader–member exchange and employee voice efficacy partly mediated the influence of social media use on employee voice behaviour. Leader–member exchange mediated the relationship between social media use and employee’s voice behaviours were greater than that of employee voice efficacy. Findings align with social exchange theory and social cognitive theory in that leader–member exchange and voice efficacy played important roles in the relationship between social media use and employee voice behaviour. From these findings, we suggest that organisations should provide timely services and support (social media tools), set exemplary leadership in social media usage, and foster open communication to improve employee voice.

The ubiquity and affordances of social media have allowed young people to become both active posters and passive recipients of communication related to health. For instance, people may post exercise goals and behaviors on social media, while at the same time, they may be exposed to friends drinking alcohol and/or indulging in unhealthy snacking. This intersection of sociotechnical systems (i.e., social media), and health and wellbeing, has garnered increasing scholarly attention. How to understand and manage the continuous use intention of health-related social media, and then provide a better service platform and create a good service model for the needs of young adults has become an important topic in the research of social media and health-related fields. Based on the SOR theory, this paper constructs a theoretical model of factors affecting the continuous use intention of health-related social media. This paper uses questionnaires and structural equation empirical research methods, relevant software to process and analyze the data, and tests the applicability of the model. The results reveal that emotional support, information support, and service quality can significantly affect pan-family consciousness, pan-family consciousness can significantly affect the continuous use intention of health-related social media. In addition, our results also show that pan-family consciousness plays a mediating role between information support and the continuous use intention of health-related social media, pan-family consciousness plays a mediating role between the service quality and the continuous use intention of health-related social media, and self-efficacy plays a mediating role between pan-family consciousness and the continuous use intention of health-related social media. These findings have important implications for research and practice in the fields of the continuous use intention of health-related social media. We hope to help with the emerging trends and future directions for research on social media and health.

The sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged universities to provide students with online teaching and learning settings that were both immediately applicable and supportive of quality learning. This resulted in a broad variety of synchronous and asynchronous online settings of teaching and learning. While some courses balanced both kinds, others offered either predominantly synchronous or asynchronous teaching and learning. In a survey study with students (N=3,056) and teachers (N=396) from a large German university, we explored whether a predominance of synchronous or asynchronous teaching and learning settings in higher education was associated with certain student experiences and outcomes. Additionally, we examined how well these two types of teaching and learning settings support students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness proposed by self-determination theory (SDT). Data were collected after the first online semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results imply that from the students’ perspective, the teaching methods involved in the two settings of teaching and learning differ with regard to their potential to support social interaction and to support basic psychological needs as proposed by SDT. Students who studied mostly in synchronous settings reported more peer-centered activities such as feedback in comparison to students in mostly asynchronous settings. In contrast, teachers perceived fewer differences between teaching methods in synchronous and asynchronous settings, especially regarding feedback activities. Further, students in mostly synchronous settings reported greater support of their basic psychological needs for competence support and relatedness as well as a greater overall satisfaction with the online term compared to students in mostly asynchronous settings. Across all students, greater fulfillment of psychological needs and higher technology acceptance coincided with outcomes that are more favorable. Implications for the post-pandemic classroom are drawn.

Resilience is a core attribute of thriving and vibrant communities. It represents the capacity of a community for absorbing abrupt change and its ability for dealing with unexpected challenges. Resilience has become an important concept for understanding the relation between a community’s dynamics and its environment, including technology. The purpose of this study is to employ this concept to unpack the complex relationship between social media and community resilience, and build a theoretical understanding that represents the nature and dynamics of such a relation. Through an iterative and interlinked process of data collection and data analysis, a substantive theory of social media for community resilience emerged. ‘Affordances of Social Media, ‘Community Resilience, and ‘Social Media constraints’ are the three major concepts that underpin this theory. These concepts emerged through a rigorous process of coding and they are strongly grounded in empirical findings. The emerged theory is also interpreted and understood through the theoretical lens of sociomateriality, analytically generalised to a more abstract and formal level. Healthcare provides a fruitful context to this study as many aspects of healthcare activities, resonate strongly with the characteristics of community resilience. In particular, communities of patients and carers that form and emerge around chronic care management activities, provide rich settings for observing different dimensions of resilience and investigating the interaction between community resilience and social media. As such, this study focuses on the management of chronic disease to understanding the role of social media in the resilience of chronic care management communities. By taking an inductive and exploratory approach, this study provides a detailed and qualitative account of the role of social media in the resilience of chronic care management communities. Designed as an embedded case study, and informed by the grounded theory method, the study focuses on different chronic disease types. Three levels of open, selective, and theoretical coding provided the study with a detailed account of the nature and relations between social media and the resilience of chronic care management communities. This study makes theoretical contributions by building a theory of social media, presenting new concepts, and providing deep insight into the role of social media in communities and community resilience. It also has implications for practice by providing new insights into patients’ and carers’ communities. Further, the study has implications for research by creating new research questions and opening potential areas of investigation.

Social media has transformed various aspects of daily life, particularly influencing communication and interaction in both physical and digital spaces. The South African employment relationship is no exception. Social media also creates opportunities for the articulation of employee voice. Through the content analysis of 118 South African first-instance social media misconduct dismissal decisions, this paper argues that employees use social media as a mechanism to express dissenting employee voice. There is evidence of individual employee voice notwithstanding employers implementing rules and social media policies to curtail expressions of dissent. It also persists despite the dismissal of employees for expressing employee voice through social media. Significantly, employee voice in the form of racialised speech badmouthing and cyber-criticising employers continues in the digital realm despite the legislative prohibition of hate speech. Despite high power disparities, the sample reveals a perfusion of individual e-voice by South African employees.

It's not all about the likes: Social media affordances with nighttime, problematic, and adverse use as predictors of adolescent sleep indicators

The pervasiveness of social media in the lives of the young has prompted a growing number of studies investigating their effects on online and offline behaviors, especially when it comes to risk or self -harm behaviors. The examination of self- harm behaviors both suicidal and non-suicidal is grounded primarily in psychological and medical research but the increase in the number of adolescents who self- harm, in the last few years, expanded research into the use of social media. While there were both positive and negative accounts of the relationship of social media use to self- harm, this paper addresses the issue from a communication perspective. The main argument of this paper is that social media are complex interactive, multimodal and multidirectional environments and user created cultures that cannot be understood through traditional theories of media effects or simply in quantitative terms of uses and gratifications. Drawing from contemporary studies on media effects and social media affordances, this is an attempt to map the theoretical and methodological challenges in an effort to lay the ground for an enhanced understanding of social media as mediators in self-harming behaviors. A review of current studies in this field reconfirms the conditional and indirect character of media effects identifying at the same time the limitations and gaps in the examination of a complex behavior as it relates to multimodal “self- mass communication” (Castells, 2009) that leads to new forms of “socialized communication”. Further research on social media affordances and their effects on the cognitive and social-emotional development of young people will provide a better analytical framework not only for the assessment of self-harm but also for using social media to mitigate negative behaviors.

An increasingly influential strand of research on social media relies on the concept of affordances to account for effects. However, hindering the possibility of a unified theory of affordances in social media is the conceptual blurring surrounding the concept. This article engages in a comprehensive review of the affordances literature in social media, aiming to provide an overview of the current state of the art and clarify the use of the concept. Through a systematic literature review, the characteristics of affordances research in social media are uncovered: the most prominent areas of application, research approaches, and dominant typologies and conceptualisations. Significant blurriness of the term ‘affordance’ is identified as well as an inconsistent use in research. To tackle these problems, a unified definition of affordances in social media is proposed based on the synthesis of knowledge on affordances in technology and social media. The suggested definition captures the core aspects of the concept to reduce ambiguity in the use of the concept and further the research on affordances of social media. The article provides the groundwork for future use of affordances theory in social media research.

Live-action role-playing (larp) is characterized by participants’ physical and mental immersion in a storyworld, played out in a specific location during a fixed period of time. Most of the immersion is realized during the live event itself, where a collective story is acted out in physical space in real time. However, contemporary larping also usually entails significant interaction and communication between players, and between players and organisers, before and after the event itself, through digital media. In this article, we explore the social media afterlife of one of the most significant Nordic larp events in recent years, Fortune and Felicity (2017). Using an affordance framework, we discuss what happens to the “liveness” of the larp when it is extended into social media. Through the affordances of persistence, visibility, editability and associability, we analyse material from the Facebook group connected to Fortune and Felicity, used by players and organisers to prepare for the larp and, afterwards, to continue the gameplay and to de-brief. In social media, the continuum of time and space, which is characteristic of the larp event itself, is changed into asynchronous and physically separate player action. Thus, the affordances of social media, we argue, enable player interaction and collaborative storytelling in ways that change the narrative, interactive and immersive dynamics of the larp.