A Postmodern Turn for Social Media Research: Theory and Research Directions for Public Relations Scholarship

The public relations literature on social media has focused primarily on how social media platforms can be leveraged to the advantage of organizations for relationship building and so-called dialogue with publics. Yet most research has positioned relationships in social media merely as opportunities for information exchange, perpetuating models of public relations grounded in systems theory that ignore power imbalances. Consequently, this article offers insights from postmodernist theories to first deconstruct existing research and then offer suggestions for future social media scholarship. The article argues that social media scholars have privileged dominant rational models of social engagement. Dissensus and disorder, according to Lyotard, may be as legitimate and more liberatory states of discourse for marginalized publics. Postmodern theories of language games and differential consciousness are also positioned as ways in which social media theory and practice may be advanced. The article thus complicates how relationships are theorized in contemporary scholarship and challenges both scholars and practitioners to rethink approaches to social media practice through a postmodern lens.     

Equity Theory: Directions for Future Research*

A review and critique of currently existing theories of equity or distributive justice lead to the conclusion that future theoretical development would be aided by a more complete analysis of the structural determinants of the activation of equity concerns as well as the conditions which lead to particular reactions to inequity. Explicit consideration is given to such determinants as the nature of the stratification system, the type of injustice involved, the existence of an ideology and sense of community, and the source of the inequity. Research specifying the impact of these conditions upon the emergence of equity concerns in social systems and subsequent collective or individual reactions to injustice should facilitate the reformulation and extension of equity theory.     

The Social Life of the Senses: Charting Directions

Sensory scholarship in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history and geography, among others, has proliferated in the last few decades. Sensory works in these disciplines argue for the senses as social, highlighting important insights that further our comprehension of selfhood, culture, and social relations. In this paper, I delineate five interrelated sections that inform how sensory works have developed over time. In the first section, I provide an adumbrated background with regard to the hierarchy of the senses, and call attention to the need to move beyond the hegemony of vision. The second section offers a discussion on how Sociology has contributed to sensory studies, addressed alongside other disciplines. Building upon these two sections, both theoretical directions and methodological issues will be deliberated in the third and fourth sections respectively. The last section locates the development of sensory research in organizational terms, by elucidating upon the various institutional efforts that have been pursued towards organizing sensory research and scholarly publications through different avenues. The article then concludes by putting forward the concept of sensory transnationalism as a suggestion for the next step forward towards broadening sensory research.     

Social Media and Social Movements

What role does social media play in social movements and political unrest? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google have all been cited as important components in social revolutions, including those in Tunisia, Egypt, Iceland, Spain, and the global Occupy movement. This essay explores social science claims about the relationship between social networking and social movements. It examines research done on the relationship between social networking, the promotion of activism, and the offline participation in the streets. Can the technology of social networking help activists to achieve their goals? If so, is it just one of many tools they may use, or is the technology so powerful that the right use will actually tip the scales in favor of the social movement? This scholarship divides into optimistic, pessimistic, and ambivalent approaches, turning on an oft‐repeated question: will the revolution be tweeted?     

Social Media Management

Do foundations effectively use social media to engage stakeholders? Do usage and engagement vary by foundation type? This article has been written to stimulate discussion and research about social media use and user engagement by foundations beyond measuring social media presence. We analyzed Facebook usage and stakeholder engagement for three types of foundations: community, corporate, and independent grant‐making foundations. We found that although community foundations are more likely to have a social media presence, corporate and independent foundations are more likely to use Facebook and to effectively engage stakeholders. Findings illuminate the need to understand social media usage and engagement in addition to presence. We discuss potential benefits of social media use and provide practical communication management recommendations for nonprofit practitioners.     

Policing Social Media

Social media policing is composed of individual and institutional activity. Instead of supplanting conventional policing, individual users actually enhance its scope, and are often unwillingly enrolled in this process. This produces a visibility that combines the mandate and impunity of police scrutiny with the unique optics of everyday life. After proposing a theoretical framework to make sense of the sociological relevance of social media policing, I consider the response to the 2011 Vancouver riot as an exemplar of how police are adapting to the volume of information on sites such as Facebook.     

Social Media Policy in Social Work Education: A Review and Recommendations

Although social media use has grown dramatically, program policies have not kept pace. Some programs now state that student social media activities have led to professional conduct reviews and may violate ethical standards. This article reviews current social media policies and conceptualizes their key elements. A review of current social media policies is reported, pointing to the need for further policy development. Six domains of a social media policy are identified: understanding social media, ethical and legal obligations, implications of one’s personal and professional online presence, institutional obligations to the program and agency, productivity implications, and possible consequences for violations of the policy. A model social media policy is detailed, and unresolved issues are identified.     

Navigating Ethical Challenges in Social Media: Social Work Student and Practitioner Perspectives

ABSTRACT

The portable, accessible nature of technology affords social workers opportunities to venture outside traditional service contexts by engaging in the virtual realm. This qualitative article uses two small-scale exploratory case studies to investigate the concept of ethical challenges in online peer networking and blogging by a social work student and social work practitioner. The article seeks to address the opportunities for and complexities of navigating technology and social media, while also emphasising the need for social workers to acquire a range of skills and competencies, and use well-established frameworks to engage in ethical online practice.     

Technology-Enhanced Active Learning Classrooms: New Directions for Social Work Education

Social work educators are increasingly exploring how to effectively use technology in their classrooms. The purpose of this study was to explore how a technology-enhanced active learning classroom influenced social work students’ engagement and overall learning experiences. An online survey was conducted with 125 social work students from micro and macro courses. When compared to macro courses, students from micro social work courses more positively reported active participation, effective teaching, and technical skills as benefits of the classroom. Furthermore, the dynamic learning environment and instructors’ effective teaching significantly affected students’ positive learning experience. Social work programs should develop various teaching methods for active learning classrooms to develop students’ practice skills that can be transferred to the real world.     

Social Movements and New Media

This article explores the contention that social movements are a significant social force transforming societies through their engagement with new media, such as the Internet, Web 2.0, and digital communications, which are seen as capable of facilitating new power structures. Utilizing della Porta and Diani's framework, it considers how new media technologies may be shaping the structure, identity, opportunity, and protest dimensions of social movements. It concludes by suggesting that new media does offer important opportunities for cost‐effective networking, interpretive framing, mobilization, and repertoires of protest action. However, their adoption does not represent the creation of entirely new virtual social movements but rather a new means of providing existing social movement organisations, local activist networks, and street‐level protest with a trans‐national capacity to collaborate, share information, and communicate with a wider audience. Such new media‐enabled social action is both more congruent with a politics of identity but may also increasingly be competing within a media environment saturated by user‐generated content.     

Theory for Community Practice in Social Work:

The effort is made to revitalize the search for practice theory which will inform and guide the community practitioner. Ecological theory is used to identify a generic model of community practice and analyze member cohesion in the three traditional modalities. The theory of energy in human ecology is developed to set the stage for an energy assessment, and the selection of strategic energy patterns in phases of organizing. Theoretical propositions with practice implications are offered for research on the relationship between strategic energy-patterns of organizing, energy costs, specialization of function, and styles of intervention.     

Organizational Social Media Accounts: Moving Toward Listening Competency

Researchers apply Bodie, St. Cyr, Pence, Rold, and Honeycutt’s (2012) model of listening competency to social media messaging for organizations. The article provides examples of how organizations and their social media managers, as de facto “listening agents,” can incorporate important verbal listening behaviors that represent active-empathic listening—pertinent responses, elaboration, offering advice and opinions, and answering and asking questions—into their social media profiles. In addition, guidance is provided to social media managers and organizations for how to adopt listening skills that will foster dialogue between organizations and their online publics. Potential areas for future research are also examined.