Adoption of social media as a communication medium : a study of theoretical foundations

The continuing popularity and adoption of social media by the general public and the realisation of its potential customer engagement power by business, is highlighting the importance of social media to ongoing business activities and strategies. However, current research that is more focused around the potential power of social media generates little debate of the adoption factors driving public use of social media as a communication medium. Even though businesses have an opportunity to broaden their reach by adding social media to the communication strategic-mix, the dearth of informed discussions relating to theoretical underpinnings associated with the public adaptation of social media as a communication medium fails to clearly inform strategic business decisions regarding adoption decision-making. This research study conducted in the Australian context queries established theoretical frameworks by asking the question; what theoretical foundations do influence the social media adoption by the intended audience of communication?

The adoption of social media by Australian banks to communicate with the public

 This thesis focuses on social media adoption by the Australian banks as method of communication. It proposes a ‘technology independent’ adoption model with components that encompass sociotechnological factors governing the adoption of social media. The model can also be adapted by any business organisation and prove beneficial for future.

Social media in disaster response : Queensland Police Service - public engagement during the 2011 floods

Social Media, particularly Microblogging services, are now being adopted as an additional tool for emergency service agencies to be able to interact with the community at all stages of a disaster. Unfortunately, no standard framework for Social Media adoption for disaster management exists and emergency service agencies are adopting Social Media in an ad-hoc fashion. This paper seeks to provide a general understanding of how Social Media is being used by emergency service agencies during disasters, to better understand how we might develop a standardised framework of adoption. In this study of the 2010/11 Queensland Flood event, Facebook broadcast messages from the Queensland Police Service to the general public, were analysed by genre. Findings show that these Microblogging activities were mostly about information distribution and warning broadcasts and that the strength of Social Media for two-way communication and collaboration with the general public, was under-utilised during this event.

Facebook content analysis: a study into Australian banks' social media community engagement

Understanding the motives that encourage users to adopt social media to communicate with businessesis very important. This research study was conducted with Australian banks and adds to the developmentof empirically tested social media adoption model consisting of technological and social communicationaspects (Senadheera, 2015). This chapter presents the findings of the research study based on analysisof wall posts gathered from Australian banks’ Facebook presence in the year 2013. The research studyinvolves a thematic analysis of frequently used words by Australian banks in their respective Facebookwall posts following an outcome of a word frequency test conducted using NVivo. This analysis wasconducted with the proposed adoption model as the basis to determine whether banks’ Facebook contentaddresses the basic user requirements driving them to adopt social media to communicate with Australianbanks. The results strengthens the robustness and the applicability of the social media adoption model.

Adoption of social media in Victorian local governments

The use of the Internet and social media tools by Australians has increased significantly over the last five years. Social media tools provide local governments with the opportunity to inform, serve and interact with their constituents on a level not previously possible. This paper uses a mixed method approach to firstly review current use of social media tools by Victorian local governments and secondly interview elected officials and administrators of four Victorian local councils about barriers to the adoption of social media tools. The results show that while 59 Victorian local governments (74%) are utilizing at least one social media tool, there are 20 councils (25%) that still do not utilize social media tools. The interviews indicate that the main barriers hindering social media implementations are: uncertainty, fear of risk, lack of knowledge and experience, lack of resources, lack of trust and, the culture of government. The main contribution of this study is a review of the current level of adoption of social media tools by Victorian local governments and identifies a number of barriers that prevent local government from fully utilizing the advantages of social media tools. Currently most Victorian local governments use social media to disseminate information.

The dependent variable in social media use

What is the dependent variable in social media use? From a research perspective, this is a pertinent question to help explain and understand the behaviors that underpin the widespread adoption and use of social media throughout society. From a practical
perspective, the question is relevant for social media technology providers, for businesses that use social media, and community organizations that turn towards social media to reach out to their constituents. We propose the construct 'sense of community' as the dependent variable, which is reflected in four sub-constructs related to the behaviors of social media users. These behaviors are information seeking, hedonic activities, sustaining of strong ties and extending weak ties. Empirical evidence for these constructs comes from a survey of social media use by 18-25 year-olds in Indonesia, a ,country with exceptionally high utilization of social media. We outline practical implications of the  findings and areas for further theoretical development.

A study into how Australian banks use social media

Social Media is a term commonly used to describe a group of individual web based services that have grown beyond the provisioning of the capability to connect, network or blog. The popular social networking services have evolved into a ‘platform’ by incorporating a multitude of functionalities through an array of applications to attract millions of users. This has created a favourable environment for businesses to exploit the benefit of having access to millions of social media users by using it as a business support tool. Studies indicate that social media services are being used by businesses for engaging with the general public, enhancing customer interaction, and for crisis communications. Whilst there are many businesses who have adopted social media, others have either rejected the idea or are still unsure about how to proceed. This paper analyses the functionality of selected social media services in order to explore how Australian banks use such services strategically. It reports findings from a longitudinal study of Australian bank use of four popular social media services: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube.

The role of entrepreneurial marketing in social media

Social media are increasingly emerging as a source of competitive advantage, as a means of reaching and engaging consumers, and as a source of consumer insight. This paper identifies challenges associated with the implementation of social media as perceived by senior marketers. Using a qualitative thematic analysis methodology, we identify differences between entrepreneurial and nonentrepreneurial organisations in social media implementation. It is proposed that entrepreneurial marketing may provide theoretical guidelines for implementation of social media. The paper concludes with research propositions that will test the effectiveness of entrepreneurial marketing in overcoming the implementation challenges of social media.

Can qualitative content analysis be adapted for use by social informaticians to study social media discourse? A position paper

IS research on social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, blogs) has so far used user surveys or quantitative content analysis (QuantCA) research methods almost exclusively. There is considerable potential for social informatics research to use qualitative content analysis (QualCA) to explore social media discourse and its appropriation by people “in situ”. This paper presents the position that QualCA offers researchers the flexibility to identify emergent research questions and units of analysis which they may not have preconceived. This is likely to be important for IS research because of the infancy and evolving nature of social media discourse. The paper puts forward suggestions on how the QualCA research method can be adapted for this type of research.

Blogs bother me : social media, journalism and the curriculum

This paper grew out of the authors’ interest in updating the journalism curriculum at AUT (Aukland University of Technology) to better reflect the impact of online media, including social media, on the work of journalists. The challenge for journalism educators is to remain relevant in rapidly changing news and education environments. Our study suggests that while the vast majority of students have some engagement with social media, particularly social networking, and are aware that it can be a powerful tool for journalists, they are still not entirely comfortable with its techniques and they are not experimenting with social media as a production platform as much as we first thought. In short, it appears that they do not have command of professional fluency with social media tools. In response to these findings we have begun to introduce some social media tools and processes directly into the units we teach, in particular: digital story-telling techniques; the use of Twitter and location-based applications; encouraging the ethical use of Facebook etc. for sourcing stories and talent for interviews; podcasting, soundslides and video for the Web, Dreamweaver, InDesign and PHP-based content management systems. We do not see the work to date as the end-point of the changes that we know are necessary, but we are acutely aware of the limitations (structural, institutional and financial) that suggest we should continue with this small-steps approach for the foreseeable future.