Abstract
PurposeInformed by social representation theory, the study aims to explore how marketing workers represent their activities on social media.Design/methodology/approachA naturalistic data set of 17,553 messages posted on Twitter by advertising workers was collected. A sample of over 1,000 unique messages from this data set, incorporating all external links and images, was analysed inductively using structured thematic analysis.FindingsAdvertising workers represent marketing work as a series of fun yet constrained activities involving relationships with clients and colleagues. They engage in cognitive polyphasia by evaluating these productive differences in both a positive and negative light.Research limitations/implicationsThe study marks a novel use of social representation theory and innovative social media analysis. Further research should explore these relations in greater depth by considering the networks that marketing workers create on social media and establish how, when and why marketing workers turn to social media in their everyday activities.Practical implicationsMarketing workers choose to represent aspects of their work to one another, using social media. Marketing managers should support such activities and consider social media as a way to understand the lives and experiences of marketing workers.Originality/valueMarketing researchers have embraced digital media as a route to understanding consumers. This study demonstrates the value of analysing digital media to develop an understanding of marketing work. It sheds new light on the ways marketing workers create social relationships and enables marketing managers to understand and observe the social aspects of effective marketing.
Highlights
Social media has become a core tool in marketing
In an attempt to integrate these two perspectives and provide a theoretically-derived justification for utilising social media posts to learn about marketing work, this study introduces a different theoretical tradition: social representation theory (SRT)
This study demonstrates that social media offers a way for marketing managers to understand the experiences of marketing workers
Summary
Social media has become a core tool in marketing. The purpose of this study is to explore how marketing workers represent marketing work with each other on social media. It has been argued that contemporary workers discuss their work on social media for two purposes. In the case of marketing workers, such findings may reflect the increasingly precarious working conditions of contemporary marketing work. Another school of thought tells us that workers’ engagements with social media “represent an employee-driven urge to make sense, to analyse and to exchange impressions of what labour is for, why we do it and what it means to us” Rather than illustrate contemporary trends, this perspective sees social media use as a manifestation of a long-standing desire among workers to imbue their work with personal, social and cultural meaning
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