The Role of Social Media in Internal Communication: A Review of Academic Sources

This paper reviews ten academic sources on the use of social media for internal communication in organizations. The sources cover topics such as the affordances of social media, its impact on organizational performance, and the development of an innovation culture. The paper concludes that while social media can bring numerous benefits, compliance with regulatory requirements and consideration of external factors is necessary.

18 November 2018
Business Communication

Introduction
The chief purpose of the paper is to search and locate ten academic sources that will
further aid in the proposal work, followed by the two assessments, i.e. the Assessment 2a and
2b. The work is based on the successful implementation of the digital communication
strategy within an entity. The communication strategy chosen for the evaluation is the “Using
Social Media in the workplace to communicate”

Source 1
Treem, J., & Leonardi, P. (2013). Social Media Use in Organizations: Exploring the
Affordances of Visibility, Editability, Persistence, and Association. Annals Of The
International Communication Association, 36(1), 143-189. doi:
10.1080/23808985.2013.11679130
The article states that the use of the social media technologies leads to the four
different and consistent affordances that are visibility, edit ability, persistence, and
association. The article makes use of the affordance approach to describe the utilities yielded
by the social media technologies in the organisations. The article accords that the visibility of
the knowledge has increased by the use of the social media, including the meta-knowledge
and the activity streams. The article further stresses on the three communication processes
development by the use of the social media that are the socialization, information sharing,
and power relations. The article makes use of the comprehensive study, but there is a lack of
diagrammatic representation and the numerical data. The study is mainly based on the
theoretical reviews. The purpose of the selection of the article for the review was the
description of the various aspects from the scratch and the detailed review.
Source 2
Baruach, T.D. (2012). Effectiveness of social media as a tool of communication and its
potential for technology enabled connections. International Journal of Scientific and
Research Publication. 2(5).
The paper accords that the use of the emails has altogether set a new benchmark on
the corporate communications. The work further makes an analysis using the qualitative and
the quantitative techniques, in addition to the survey method and the observation methods to
study the role of the social media in the communication within an enterprise. The detailed

study is quite evident in the form of the graphs and the charts, which makes it easy for the
readers to understand the same. The work further states that the use of the collaboration
techniques had led to the ease in the different corporate functions such as sharing and
spreading of the important information, meetings among the members, the sharing of the
opinions and many more. The real time sharing is what makes the social media, an efficient
tool for the corporate communications.
Source 3
Leonardi, P. M. (2017). The social media revolution: Sharing and learning in the age of leaky
knowledge. Information and Organization, 27(1), 47-59.
The work is prepared after the collection of the data from the employees of a financial
service firm. The work thus states the importance and the role of the social media techniques
in the modern enterprise, in different departments and the activities. The authors shed light on
the differences in the traditional method of communication, which involved the time and
effort consuming techniques such as the documentation, physical appearance and more. Thus
social media and modern techniques are a means of motivation of the effective and timely
communication for the employees. However, the article is more focussed on the area of the
concern that is the potential leakage that can take place while the information is being shared.
In addition, the work states that the information repository is an important tool for knowledge
sharing, and the organisation can share and access knowledge from the same. This aids in
effective and efficient information sharing.
Source 4
Parveen, F., Jaafar, N. I., & Ainin, S. (2015). Social media usage and organizational
performance: Reflections of Malaysian social media managers. Telematics and
Informatics, 32(1), 67-78.

The paper makes use of the qualitative approach and interviews six social media
managers of different organisations set up in different industries, to study the impact of the
use of the social media on the organisational communication performance, as a whole. The
different industries considered were the telecommunications, airlines, manufacturing,
consumer products, and the banking. Thus, the article based on the interview states that the
social media usage in an entity enhances the advertising, promotion and branding of the
products within and outside the organisation, building the customer and the employee
relations, information search and many more. The work makes use of the press articles and
the tables, which shows the comprehensive study conducted. The work also sheds light on the
fact that there are several legal, regulatory and the disclosure requirements, which should be
taken care of before the implementation of the social media tools in the entities.
Source 5
Leonardi, P. M., Huysman, M., & Steinfield, C. (2013). Enterprise social media: Definition,
history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(1), 1-19.
The work analyses and states the use of the enterprise social media platform within
the organisations for the communication among the employees and the management. The
paper reviews the historical aspects of such communication channels, as well as the future
prospects. In addition, the article analyses the use of the social media, in the context of being
a “leaky pipe” and the “echo chamber,” where the information that is to be passed on can go
into unwanted hands and also the likeminded people can be brought together to avoid the
conflicts of the ideas and the opinions. However, as stated by the article, there are a number
of barriers affecting the communication processes in an organisation. These are the language
barriers, development of disingenuous relationships, and more. The absence of the diagrams
and the charts makes the reading lengthy; however, the choice of language is simple. The

article concludes that there is a wide scope for the study of the use of social media and the
improvements in the same for the enterprises.
Source 6
El Ouirdi, A., El Ouirdi, M., Segers, J., & Henderickx, E. (2015). Employees' use of social
media technologies: a methodological and thematic review. Behaviour & Information
Technology, 34(5), 454-464.
The article accords that the use of the social media is a means for the improvement of
the horizontal and vertical communication channels in the modern global entities. The work
is a detailed review and analysis that has been conducted with the help of the 66 articles, on a
range of topics as related to the use of the social media tolls within the organisations. These
articles are based on the topics such as the human resource management, knowledge
management, legal and the political aspects and the social media as a learning tool. Thus, the
framework of proper and detailed guidelines is essential for the implementation. In addition,
the article supports the view that the there is an enhancement in the peer support and thus the
motivation levels of the employees of the organ8sations that makes use of the modern
communication strategies. The benefits to the top management are in the form of the cutting
on the cost and the time, and thus an overall improvement in the communication budget.
Source 7
Stamati, T., Papadopoulos, T., & Anagnostopoulos, D. (2015). Social media for openness and
accountability in the public sector: Cases in the Greek context. Government
Information Quarterly, 32(1), 12-29.
The above stated article is set on the analysis and the studies conducted in the public
sector organisations in Greece that are being managed by the government. Thus, the use of
the government social media is the point of the study. The article thus accords that the social

media tools are essential for the improvement in the accountability and the transparency,
which is the prime necessity of the public sector organisations. Thus, the interviews were
conducted in order to gather the information from a range of the policy makers, regulators
and the strategic managers of these entities. The article can be said to be a comprehensive
study because a wide literature has been reviewed and the conclusions are drawn on the basis
of the five principles of openness as are stated in the Greek context of management. The
same is presented in the form of tables as well, which makes it easy to understand for the
readers. The findings of the study states that apart from improving the responsibility and the
work culture for the employees; the social media tools also increases the citizen participation
and the reduction of corruption by increase of the transparency.
Source 8
Haddud, A., Dugger, J.C., & Gill, Preet. (2016). Exploring the impact of Internal Social
Media Usage on Employee Engagement. Journal of Social Media for Organizations,
3(1).
The study is set in the context of the North American operations of a multinational
organisation. The study was conducted on about 1600 employees. Thus, detailed intervie2s
form the base of the analysis. The work highlights that the social media tools in an
organisation not only lead to the improved communication channels, but also lead to the other
benefits such as the employee retention, employee motivation, employee engagement,
collaboration in the working, innovative practices, and many more. An important fact that has
been brought up by the study is that the success of the organisations in the modern times
largely depends on the use of the social media for communications, and the same is visible in
the success of the Fortune 500 companies as well. These companies have been consistently
using the social platforms for internal and external communications.

Source 9
Ruck, K., & Welch, M. (2012). Valuing internal communication; management and employee
perspectives. Public Relations Review, 38(2), 294-302.
The work states that the importance of communication channels can be assessed in
terms of the economic pressures as well. The work makes use of the review of the 12
assessment studies, in the year 2004- 2010, based on the academic and the consultancy
context. The findings have been depicted in the form of tables which makes ease of
understanding as well as comparing the data stated therein. The text of the work is short and
crispy and this is what makes it an interesting read. The reason for the selection of the articles
is that it presents both the management and employee perspectives for the social media and
internal communications.
Source 10
Linke, A., & Zerfass, A. (2011). Internal communication and innovation culture: developing
a change framework. Journal of Communication Management, 15(4), 332-348.
The study focusses on the point that the use of the social media can accelerate the
change management within the enterprise. This is done by the implementation of the
innovation culture. The first phase of the study is based on the review of the research and the
existing literature. The graphical analysis and analytical reasoning follow this up. The results
are further analysed and presented in the form of line charts. Finally, the work concludes that
the relevance of the social media tools in the internal communication varies as per the
different requirements of the job role of the employees. Thus, the work is a combination of
theoretical and analytical aspects.

Conclusion
From the discussion conduced in the previous parts, it can be stated that there are
various facets to the use of the social media for the internal communications. There exist a
large number of benefits of the same, but the regulatory requirements, must also be complied
with. In addition, the performance levels may vary depending upon a large number of
external and theoretical factors.