Lecture 8: Social Media Governance

Question 1

Why are organizations on Social Media?

Answer 1

1. branding/reputation purposes
2. Trend scanning (how do people talk about them + issues)
3. Relatively easy to do (you are, mostly, in control)

Question 2

What can organizations not control on social media?

Answer 2

1. the dialogues are beyond the control of communication professionals
2. organizational members/employee also use their personal accpunt
   - Can impact reputations and relations

Question 3

What are the benefits of employees’ social media use?

Answer 3

1. Reputation management
2. Intra-office communication
3. Extra-office communication
   
   • Communicating with existing customers/clients
   • New customer/client outreach
   • Participation in online work community
4. Task-related
   
   • Information Gathering
   • Crowdsourcing
   • Social media as technological solution

Question 4

What can be harmful of employees’ social media use?

Answer 4

1. Reputation damage
   
   • Representing the organization poorly
   • Plagiarism
   • Diminishing personal reputation
2. Creating offensive content
3. Time wasting
   
   • Time theft
   • Multitasking
4. Relationship damaging
   
   • Disparaging others (bullying)
   • Relationship refusal
   • Establishing inappropriate relationships

Question 5

What are the effects of social media and work performance?

Answer 5

1. Effects on happiness and fatigue
   Happiness -> Organizational citizenship behavior
   Fatigue -> Counter-productive work behavior
2. Indirect effects
   Indirect effect: Social media (all) -> Happiness -> OCB
   Indirect effect: Social media (friends only)  Fatigue  CWB

Question 6

What is governance?

Answer 6

Governance is the way rules, norms and actions are structured, sustained , regulated and held accountable.

Question 7

What is the difference between management and governance?

Answer 7

• governance is more strategic, and related to how you create, structure etc. these rules.
• Carrying out and enforcing policy is management.

Question 8

What does corporate governance refers to?

Answer 8

• The mechanisms and processes by which corporations are controlled and directed (Shailer, 2004)
• It involves balancing economic and social goals and being accountable for the use of power and behavior within the social environment (Aras and Crowther, 2012).

Question 9

What is a code of conduct?

Answer 9

a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party or an organization

Question 10

What did a study about ‘Social Media Governance’ found (van den Berg & Verhoeven, 2017) found?

Answer 10

• Nobody really ignored the risks, but some people were more aware of the opportunities…

Question 11

What means prevention focus?

Answer 11

managers focus on harmful behaviors and have a prevention focus by (mostly) restricting social media use

Question 12

What means promotion focus?

Answer 12

• trying to align corporate values onto employees (called employee identity) so that employees communicate these values to the outside world (ie stakeholders)
• sees employees as brand ambassadors

Question 13

Manager who use two way communication is focused on… prevention or promotion?

Answer 13

Promotion

Question 14

Manager who use one way communication is focused on… prevention or promotion?

Answer 14

prevention

Question 15

What are social media guidelines?

Answer 15

policies that articulate organizational expectations, responsibilities, and consequences for employees and employers and define what comprises “(in)appropriate” communication.

Question 16

What are the 6 dimension of social media management?

Answer 16

• Social media presence
• Employee encouragement
• Responsibility
• Work-private balance
• Branding policy
• Content

Question 17

What are the three frames of social media policies (Stohl et al. 2017)?

Answer 17

1. Reputation/business frame
2. Risk frame
3. Co-creation frame

Question 18

What is the ‘reputation/business frame’?

Answer 18

Communication is conceived as a public relations instrument for achieving corporate advantage and mitigating harm

Question 19

What is the ‘risk frame’?

Answer 19

Communication is viewed as a vehicle for disclosing or exposing information that may be harmful to the organization.

Question 20

What is the ‘Co-creation frame’?

Answer 20

Communication is viewed as a mechanism for transparency, employee dialogue, and employer, employee, and community rights—a co-creation frame for social media.

Question 21

Which 4 conclusion about communication did the research of social media policies (Stohl et al. 2017) found?

Answer 21

1. Freedom of speech: right to address own opinion or in line with organization
2. Engage stakeholders: promotion to actively engage with stakeholders.
3. Collective sharing: share work on social media. (thus not in response to stakeholders).
4. Transparancy: always be honest. (only positive, but they are not going to put in public guideline that it is better to lie).

Question 22

Which conclusion about boundaries did the research of social media policies (Stohl et al. 2017) found?

Answer 22

1. two-thirds (70.54 %) of companies attempt to expand their influence over employees beyond the corporate sphere by
   explicitly blurring the boundaries between corporate, private, and public communication in their guidelines.

Question 23

What are the three different types of boundaries?

Answer 23

• Spatial
• Temporal
• Material

Question 24

What are spatial boundaries?

Answer 24

= outside workplace

Question 25

What is temporal boundaries?

Answer 25

= physical boundaries (e.g. no personal phone use)

Question 26

What is material boundaries?

Answer 26

= different media (e.g., linked only professional)

Question 27

What are incentive guidelines?

Answer 27

Incentive is promotion: stimulate stakeholder engagement

Question 28

What are restrictive guidelines?

Answer 28

Restrictive focus on what cannot be posted

Question 29

What are the 4 branding behaviors of employees on social media?

Answer 29

1. the act of praising rather than criticizing one’s employer on social media (i.e. employee word-of-mouth)
2. responding to criticism about the employer and recommending its products or services on social media (i.e. employee endorsement)
3. sharing and liking the employer’s social media content (i.e. employee sharing)
4. respecting the employer’s values and culture in all social media activities (i.e. employee culture)

Question 30

Do guidelines help? (Soens & Claeys, 2021)

Answer 30

1. you want to make sure people remember it, so communicate unambiguous and clear
2. At the same time, enabling guidelines motivate people to be active on social media more than restrictive ones.
3. Which one makes employees manage their risks better? That Question remains unanswered!

Question 31

What is the impact of incentive guideline?

Answer 31

• More online Brand Ambassadorship
• More Control Mutuality

Question 32

What is the impact of restrictive guidelines?

Answer 32

• Better Guideline Recall
• restrictive guidelines demotivate people to talk online about their employer