This thesis examines organizational use of social media. It focuses on developing an understanding of the ways by which social media are used within formal organizational settings. From the vantage point of this thesis such an understanding can be achieved by looking at tensions and incompatibilities that might potentially exist between social media and organization because of their distinct characteristics. It is argued that the distinct characteristics of social media (e.g. openness, transparency, flexibility, etc.) and organization (e.g., hierarchy, formal relationships, standard procedures, etc.) may engender tensions and incompatibilities that affect the ways of using social media and their potential in organizations. The main premise here is that the possibilities, behaviors and practices afforded by social media are recognizably different in nature from common and established organizational practices, behaviors, norms and routines. Through a structurational understanding of organizational use of social media, influenced by Giddens’ theory of structuration and Orlikowski’s practice lens for studying technology use, this thesis offers the perspective of immiscibility to capture tensions and incompatibilities driven by the distinctive characteristics of social media and organization. It basically offers a way of seeing social media use in organizations as a dynamic, in-practice interplay between social media and organization characteristics. One key argument in this thesis is that the immiscible interplay of social media and organization, produces, at least in transition, ‘a bureaucracy of social media’. Social media, it is argued, are used in ways that are essentially bureaucratic, reflecting and also reinforcing established characteristics of formal organizations through the production and reproduction of structures which are driven by the immiscible interplay. The development of such an understanding was achieved through multiple research studies focusing on the use of the wiki technology for knowledge collaboration and sharing practices in two large multinational organizations: CCC and IBM. A number of qualitative methods were used in these studies to collect empirical evidence from the two organizations including interviews, field visits, observations and document analysis. The overarching contribution of this thesis centers on offering a unique way of understanding organizational use of social media by putting forward tensions and incompatibilities between social media and organization and also by providing an understanding of how such tensions and incompatibilities affect the potential for change by social media.

The current chapter discusses issues related to the use of the wiki technology at the workplace for social knowledge collaboration and sharing. This kind of technology is principally flexible and free in the sense of allowing people to create, edit, and shape content collaboratively. However, this chapter argues that the application and use of a wiki within an organizational setting might be influenced by social and structural properties that govern collaboration and sharing. It is based on empirical data obtained through 11 semi-structured interviews with employees working for a large multinational organization. The theory of structuration was used as a theoretical framework to guide the empirical inquiry. Eventually, the chapter concludes with discussing a number of structures associated with evolving norms, interpretations, and resources that govern and shape the use of a wiki as a tool for social and open collaboration.

The use of social media technologies in organizations has introduced novel ways of collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing. In this respect, the present study is concerned with examining the use of one type of social media, the wiki technology, by members of several professional communities of practice to collaborate and share knowledge with each other. As such, it seeks to identify and understand the factors that influence their use of the wiki at a large multinational organization. To this end we used an interpretive exploratory case study which included 12 in-depth interviews with senior employees and managers as primary sources of data. Additional data was obtained during two field visits at the organization through observation of the wiki, field notes, and organizational documents. The study concludes with rich insights into the dual impact of the openness of wiki collaboration as well as the manner and value of using the wiki for knowledge collaboration and sharing at the workplace.

The social media are often perceived as tools that support openness and flexible participation among individuals and communities. This might explain the reason why social media have become indispensible for many daily practices in organizations. But how do these organizations appropriate and use these media relative to their formal structures and characteristics is a question in focus for the current paper. Drawing on classical concepts of organizational bureaucracy from Weber (1978) and Eisenstadt (1959), we present a qualitative analysis of empirical data obtained from two large organizations that use a wiki as a collaborative knowledge platform. The results show how the tendency to organize the use of the wiki through introducing structure might create barriers for open and democratic collaboration and knowledge sharing at the workplace. They also show that while a freer approach to using wikis might allow for self-organizing, there is still a possibility for enacting social structures that limit openness and flexibility. As such, the paper contributes novel insights into how social media might be used in bureaucracies and soft bureaucracies. 

The expansion of social media use has enabled massive and rapid spreadability of content, which is often referred to as virality. Earlier studies have examined various aspects of virality such as the attributes of stories that become viral. In this on-going study we aim to make a better sense of the role of interpersonal influences in the spreadability of viral social media content. In this, we are inspired by Tarde’s views on interpersonal processes and the notion of imitation. Considering the recent mass migrations, and numerous viral stories that have related to the plight of refugees, we chose a group of Syrian refugees consisting of men and women as the participants for this study. In twelve in-depth qualitative interviews we learned about the participants’ views on viral stories as well as the way in which their interpersonal influences may play a role in their interaction with viral stories. The findings show that the views on migrant-related viral stories varied among the participants, but a common view seemed to be somewhat of scepticism about the agenda behind the spread of these stories. As part of the study, we identified four key interpersonal influences including community conversation, formative consciousness, community boundaries, and retrospective experiences. A main conclusion in the study is that although back-end technical issues, content attributes, emotions and so on may play a role in virality, still human agency, connections and interpersonal ties play a major role in shaping the process that leads to content spreadability, hence virality.

The widespread adoption and use of social media in almost every aspect of our daily lives may outpace existing empirical understandings. In organizations, social media are increasingly used by professional individuals and communities to support dynamic collaboration and knowledge sharing. While there is a growing amount of research on this subject, still little is known on how people use different kinds of social media in practice. That is, there is a need for an empirical understanding that addresses actual use practices of social media within the formal boundaries of organizations. To this end, we report on results from a qualitative comparative study of the use of wikis at two global organizations. Our aim is to develop an empirical understanding of the enactment of structures and the ways by which people structure and organize their wiki use practices by drawing on Orlikowski's (2000) practice lens. The findings from the authors analysis suggest a number of enacted structures that reflect diverse wiki use practices. The main contribution centers on developing three key mechanisms that provide means for understanding the structuring of the use of technology.