Summary Social Media at Work (lectures)
MSc Business Communication and Digital Media
Summary Social Media at Work (lectures 2020)
MSc Business Communication and Digital Media
Tilburg University
By: Lonneke Huijbregts and Mart Senden
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,Summary Social Media at Work (lectures)
MSc Business Communication and Digital Media
College 1a Networked organization
Sociomateriality = The interplay between society, people and organizations on the one hand and
technology and social media on the other hand. Technology affects the way we work but also the
way we work and our needs affect technolgy. The slide states:
- the entanglement of the social and the material in everyday organizational life
- Interplay between technology, organization/work and social
If you think about your mobile phone, technology has profoundly impacted the way we live, the way
we make appointments and communicate. They did not just show up, but they answer to our own
needs and desires. Also the look of the phone is something we wanted: a screen only instead of
buttons as well. This shows the interplay between technology and us.
User technology in organizations:
- Material is not observed at all: once a technology is in place, we forget it exists but it can still
have an effect. For example: Seating arrangements (when you enter a lecture room, it is
structured in a certain way. You immediately know where you have to sit and where the
lecturer will be).
- Seen as miracles: When people realize that there is a material component or social media
tool, people see it as miracles that will change everything. For example: Zoom, virtual reality
So in the current literature, technology is observed but the social aspect not.
If you look at hypes in communication technology: Alex was in a conference where they introduced a
new technology for organizations. Everyone was excited about the material aspects (the technology
itself), but nobody thought of the incorporation in the organization, so the social aspect. In general
people do not want change. Sociomateriality argues that you have to see the interplay between
technology and social aspect.
- Sociomateriality integrates human/socio-centric and techno-centric views of the use and
effects of information technologies in organizations and society as a whole
- This is called constitutive entanglement:
Humans and technology are intrinsically linked and influence each other
- This is observable at both a micro (how we use social media and mobile phones) and macro
(society etc.) level.
- Therefore, to understand social media, we need to understand the interplay between
technology and society and how people and technology interact
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,Summary Social Media at Work (lectures)
MSc Business Communication and Digital Media
MICRO LEVEL
links between social and material part of linkedin
MACRO LEVEL
When you google ‘work’, you see a lot of images with technology. If you would have googled ‘work’
100 years ago, you would see different images. The whole nature of work has shifted a lot in the past
100 years. That shift from more manual work to what we now consider work; paperwork,
technology, communication is caused by technology, but also by the way that society organized itself
and work.
In the sixties, we communicated via fax, letters, face to face. There were other technologies. The
world was way smaller, businesses operated more local then it is now. Alex lives in Amsterdam and
works in Tilburg, that’s not weird. In the eighties, people would not even consider that. Organizations
become more global.
Stages of work:
- Premodernity: Factory work, farmers, people who often worked in local envirnoment.
Everything you did was in the same village
- Modernity: Since industrialisation, the world became bigger. Factories allowed us to work in
a different way: Large scale production. It really influenced the way we lived as well, we
suddenly had to go to work. Before that, there was no distinction between work and home.
Your work was at home. Those technologies therefore also changed society.
- Late modernity: Information age. Information became more important. You see a shift from
factory work to more information based work: Insurances companies, universities, banks,
information technology. You see an increase in the service sector this period. Suddenly there
was a much higher need for communication. In a factory is everyone together, but in an
office it is different because work becomes more flexible. Suddenly the thing you produce is
information, because you have to communicate with customers and other companies.
Information is the thing you deal with. Our everyday lives now are not the way they are
because of technology, but also because changes in society (societal need to communicate,
which is facilitated by technology).
If you look at these stages, there are a couple of trends you can observe. That is called theory of
modernity (Giddens) :
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,Summary Social Media at Work (lectures)
MSc Business Communication and Digital Media
- Reduction of space-time
Earlier, people were based local. Through the ages there was a reduction of space time
constraint. Suddenly we could go to another city quickly. It becomes easier to communicate,
not bound to time and place. Now we even do many thing with video conferencing
- Diembedding of social systems
We used to be able to do everything locally, but now we have all kinds of systems in place
that we have to use separately. We suddenly need money , insurence companies, laws etc.
- Increased reflexivity
Technology increasingly allows us to think beyond our immediate surroundings.
o Reason over tradition
o Reliance on knowledge
- Information technology revolution
We adapted real quick to new technologies such as mobile phones.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION
- Machines replace brainpower
From remembering data to creativity and knowledge creation. We rely a lot more on
information technology. Machines are better and better able to get information from us and
present it in a way we understand (TikTok shows video’s based on the time you watch other
videos). Machines are not only a database anymore, the become more complex.
- Pervasiveness of IT
social media and communication technologies are the first thing you do when you wake up
and the last when you go to bed. During the day you constantly use it.
- Convergence of technology
Technologies go into one and become one technology which you can do anything. Your
mobile phone is not only to call, but has also other purposes.
- Networking logic
We increasingly see that people, machines and organizations are interconnected by means of
IT. For example: Your list of connections on linked in, your feed of facebook.
NETWORKED INDIVIDUALISM
All the changes we observe in technology and society has come together in something we call
networked individualism.
Definition: You as an individual are embedded in a network and within an organization and within
society as a whole. That is something that social media really changed and will change a lot.
Shifts in network structures because of technologies:
- Early inducstrialized society: People bound up in groups (little boxes)
o A few groups with clear boundaries
o Hierarchically and structured
o Social activity bounded by place and time
o Dominant mode of communication:
Face to face (door to door)
o Organizations were also little boxes. They were mostly based on a single location,
bounded by time and place.
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, Summary Social Media at Work (lectures)
MSc Business Communication and Digital Media
- Glocalized networks: Increasingly getting connections between the little boxes, as it becomes
easier to travel and visit other places
o People in different places and multiple social networks
o Psychological neighborhoods: communities based on common interest
o Social networks disembedded from place. However, place remains important as the
home and work place are the bases place to place connectivity
o Dominant mode of communication: Fixed telephone, mail, fax and (by the end of the
20th century) internet (email)
o People can organize themselves in more than one box at the time. For example: your
job, your family, your hobby etc.
- Networked individualism: Little boxes become less and less important. We have a large
network but everyone does their own thing. This is what you can slowly observe in
organizations: people work with other departments, develop themselves more, flexworkers
etc. People organize themselves more in flexible workgroups
o Person to person connectivity
o Rapid switching between networks
o Each person seperately operates his networks to obtain information, collaboration,
orders, support, sociability and a sense of belonging
o Interpersonal relationships increasingly based on specialized (narrow) roles
(specialized social networks)
o Weak ties become increasingly important because those are the people that can
introduce you to a different network
Is this a good or a bad thing? 1:10:00
Networked individualism at work:
We changed from a situation on the left side to a situation on the right side:
So it changed the way you function in an organization and the way organizations organize
themselves. It is all tied to social media. You are visible and have connections.
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