Task: Write an extended blog post of 1,000 words that explores, explains, and analyses social media and personal/professional boundaries in relation to social media use in information organisations.
Social media is a powerful tool for information organisations that has the ability deconstruct the traditional boundaries between users and institutions by creating a personalised, accessible, and informal point of contact (Mon, 2015, pp. 5-6). For information organisations such as libraries, it has also been proven to be a low-cost, high-reward tool to promote library services to a wide user base (Adekunle & Olla, 2015, p. 45), increase user engagement (Joo et al., 2018, p. 940), advocate for the importance of libraries in society (Kwon et al., 2021, p. 55), and provide real-time feedback and analytics for library services.
However, intrinsically, the culture of social media and the type of content that successfully achieves a personalisation of an organisation demands a level of vulnerability, authenticity, and disclosure for the employees involved in the content creation process, and risk taking for the organisation (Ihejirika, et al., 2021, p. 10). For example, one library social media account that has experienced great success is the Milwaukee Public Library (MPL) Instagram page, which has taken a risky, comedic, and uncensored approach to their content creation, resulting in the page gaining nearly 200,000 followers (Milwaukee Public Library, n.d.), and a high degree of media attention (Alcántara, 2022; Diamond, 2022; Silver, 2023). As such, information organisations must consider that the approach to social media, particularly successful, viral social media, is a risky endeavour that blurs the boundaries between professionalism and personalisation, which can present significant issues regarding reputational risk, policy and governance, and employee privacy.
Putting individual employees at the forefront of an organisation’s social media has been shown to be an effective strategy to personalise an organisation, create strong interpersonal relationships, and increase user engagement (Kwon et al., 2021, p. 56). However, repeatedly featuring individual employees establishes them as characters and the proxy “face” of the organisation, identifiable by users both within the physical space of the library and online (Potter, 2012, pp. 4-5). Due to the connected environment of social media, it is inevitable that these employees will be tagged or identified in posts, even if the organisation itself avoids doing so. Consequently, the boundaries between the professional social media of the organisation and the personal social media of the employee becomes blurred, and accordingly, the traditionally segregated audience of the professional and personal accounts becomes linked (Archer-Brown, et al., 2018, p. 75; Abril, et al., 2012, p. 64). As examined by Abril, et al. (2012), Forssell (2020), and Zhao and Yu (2018), Erving Goffman’s presentation theory has been used to demonstrate how people control others’ impressions of them based on spatial boundaries and the persona that they decide to present to this closed audience. However, social media blurs the spatiotemporal boundaries of work and private life, and its associated audiences. Accordingly, this has the potential to put the employee in a compromised position as the expectations of their workplace conduct and professionalism extends into their personal sphere (Abril, et al., 2012, p. 64), which can increase the psychological burden of workplace demands (Zhao & Yu, 2023, p. 7). This breach of the employee private sphere can also have significant impacts on the employee’s freedom of personal expression as they have to begin self-moderating their personal content in line with the demands of professionalism (Abril, et al., 2012, p. 64).
Similarly, the breakdown of professional/personal boundaries on social media increases the reputational risk for the organisation, as the personal behaviour, beliefs, and ideologies of an individual employee can be interpreted to represent those of the organisation (Abril, et al., 2012, p. 90; Archer-Brown, et al., 2018, p. 77). For example, if the employee is a strong political advocate and regularly posts as such on their personal page, this may be interpreted that the organisation is endorsing their political viewpoints. Moreover, if the employee posts controversial or inappropriate content on their personal social media page, and the employee is then featured on the organisation’s social media page, this may result in backlash against the organisation that may damage their reputation amongst the public and key stakeholders (Abril, et al., 2012, p. 90). This situation has been witnessed innumerable times on social media where brands and organisations have had to remove a brand ambassador or “face” of the organisation in order to salvage the organisation’s reputation, such as when Gap, Adidas, Balenciaga, and Vogue cancelled brand deals with Kanye West following his comments on social media (Dean & Jackson, 2022). As such, organisations may also seek to control an employee’s behaviour outside of the workplace by instituting regulatory policies to achieve boundary management such as “morality clauses” and “codes of conduct” (Zhao & Yu, 2023, p. 2; Abril, et al., 2012, p. 90). These boundary management strategies formalise the blurring of the professional and personal, as professional policies extend into the life, expression, and interaction of employees outside of the workplace.
Ultimately, it is clear that the use of social media by information organisations poses a variety of risks to the organisation and its employees involved in content creation, including lack of control and reputational risk for the organisation, and greater psychological burden of workplace demands for the employee. However, social media provides a vast range of benefits for information organisations and should not be avoided simply due to the presence of these risks. Instead, information organisations should establish multidisciplinary working groups when establishing a social media strategy that incorporates media and communications, human resources, legal and risk governance teams. By doing so, the risks to both the organisation and the employees should be identified, analysed, and mitigated through a risk management process, rather than by avoiding the risk of social media in its entirety. For employees, these requirements, including any boundary management policies such as codes of conduct that expand the requirements of professionalism into their personal sphere, should be explicitly communicated during the hiring process so that all parties are informed of their responsibilities. Moreover, it is vital that any boundary management policies implemented by information organisations acknowledge the importance of freedom of expression and individual autonomy for its employees, so as to ensure that the organisation does not exceed its influence in regard to the law and social expectations.
(1026 words)
References
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Alcántara, A-M. (2022, December 23). This local library is an overnight social-media sensation. Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-local-library-is-an-overnight-social-media-sensation-11671767071
Alexandria. (2019). [Photograph of hands holding an iPhone in front of bookshelves]. https://www.goalexandria.com/7-ways-to-promote-your-school-library-using-social-media/
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Dean, G., & Jackson, S. (2022, October 26). From Adidas to JPMorgan, these are all the companies cutting ties with Kanye West after his offensive behavior. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/kanye-west-companies-cutting-ties-adidas-gap-balenciaga-vogue-tweet-2022-10#balenciaga-4
Diamond, J. (2022, December 2). Is this the best library Instagram in America? Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/is-this-the-best-library-instagram-in-america/
Forssell, R. C. (2020). Cyberbullying in a boundary blurred working life: Distortion of the private and professional face on social media. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 15(2), 89-107. https://doi.org/10.1108/QROM-05-2018-1636
Ihejirika, K. T., Goulding, A., & Calvert, P. J. (2021). Do they “like” the library? Undergraduate students’ awareness, attitudes, and inclination to engage with library social media. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(6), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.102451
Joo, S., Choi, N., & Baek, T. H. (2018). Library marketing via social media: The relationship between Facebook content and user engagement in public libraries. Online Information Review, 42(6), 940-955. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-10-2017-0288
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Silver, M. (2023, August 7). Milwaukee Public Library is gaining global attention because of its social media. NPR Morning Edition. https://www.npr.org/2023/08/07/1192432565/milwaukee-public-library-is-gaining-global-attention-because-of-its-social-media
Zhao, A. T., & Yu, Y. (2023). Employee online personal/professional boundary blurring and work engagement: Social media anxiety as a key contingency. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2022.100265