Integrating Social Media Into the Workplace: A Study of Shifting Technology Use Repertoires

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Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
ISSN: 0883-8151 (Print) 1550-6878 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hbem20
Integrating Social Media Into the Workplace: A
Study of Shifting Technology Use Repertoires
Justin A. Walden
To cite this article: Justin A. Walden (2016) Integrating Social Media Into the Workplace: A
Study of Shifting Technology Use Repertoires, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 60:2,
347-363, DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2016.1164163
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2016.1164163
Published online: 16 May 2016.
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Integrating Social Media Into the Workplace: A
Study of Shifting Technology Use Repertoires
Justin A. Walden
Research indicates that people are increasingly spending time with social
media and other information communication technology. However, scholars
have not fully examined how employees as holistic media consumers utilize
social media in multiple contexts. Through in-depth interviews (N = 29), this
study demonstrates that even as social media are embedded in organizational
media use routines, employees question this technology for 2 reasons: It
distracts from tasks and threatens personal privacy. These concerns often,
but not exclusively, relate to employee age and the amount of time they
have worked for the company. The study concludes by arguing that social
media’s arrival in the workplace may exacerbate tensions and problems that
are associated with presence-creep and the distortion of the work-life balance.
In today’s digitally networked global economy, the boundaries between personal
and professional identities and between work and home spaces are being re-shaped.
Indeed, changing global market conditions and the increased availability of informa-
tion communication technology are facilitating the blurring of lines between employ-
ees’ home and work environments (Deuze, 2007; Raine & Wellman, 2012).
Concerns about the precarious nature of work (with employees having an increas-
ingly tenuous grasp over their employment) and the increased expectation that
employees remain constantly connected to work have been raised by scholars
such as Deuze (2007), Gregg (2011), and Gill and Pratt (2008). Along with these
concerns are questions about how and when it is appropriate to utilize various digital
platforms and communication devices. Most often, these discussions have occurred
with respect to the work-life balance and the ways in which employees are coping
with the intrusion of work-related communication technology into their personal
lives. Overlooked in the literature, to this point, is another consideration: How rules
influence the use of personal social media in the workplace.
If we acknowledge that behaviors are often socially negotiated and interpreted
(i.e., people learn from others about how to act), it becomes important to examine
Justin A. Walden (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is an assistant professor at North Dakota State
University. His research interests include media use routines, employee/organizational communication, and
brand management.
© 2016 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 60(2), 2016, pp. 347–363
DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2016.1164163 ISSN: 0883-8151 print/1550-6878 online
347Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 21:27 09 June 2016

the processes by which social rules are developed and maintained with respect to
communications technology. In treating the workplace as a distinct system, a line of
structuration-guided scholarship (e.g., Orlikowski, 1992; Sinclaire & Vogus, 2011;
Watson-Manheim & Belanger, 2007) has considered the relationship between social
exchange and rule development and agency-imbued individuals’ experiences with
technology. This scholarship holds that rules as structures influence human behavior
and these rules are established in response to technological and social factors.
Although evidence suggests that our personal and professional media identities are
merging, a deeper consideration of how one’s personal and professional networks
are arranged and the meanings that workers give to their various audiences is
needed. It is also worthwhile to investigate the socially negotiated development of
rules for acceptable social media use in the workplace. This case study of a small
United States company explored the influence of individual backgrounds on the
development of organizational media use routines and the crossover of media
consumption activities into multiple realms.
Literature Review
The economic downturn of the 21st century’s first decade and broader changes
relating to globalization have left employees, particularly well-paid and high-
status workers, in a more precarious situation than a generation ago (Gill &
Pratt, 2008; Gregg, 2011). Work today is seen as less secure and more centered
on the individual, with employees bearing the brunt of finding, negotiating, and
securing work (Deuze, 2007; Gill & Pratt, 2008). Along with these structural
changes, the explosion of mobile information and communication technologies
in the last fifteen years has made work inherently more accessible than ever
before. Employees can now easily check email, work remotely, and stay abreast
of work issues from home and while they travel. This has given rise to more
flexible work schedules and explicit (from corporate) and implicit (from peers)
expectations that employees remain constantly connected to their jobs (Gill &
Pratt, 2008; Gregg, 2008; 2011). This is best understood as a process of “presence
bleed,” where work-related communication platforms and devices creep into
spaces and times that were previously off limits (Gregg, 2011). Quite simply,
employees face more pressure to remain virtually “on” even when they are not
in the physical environment of work. This has implications for the divide between
work and home: “[F]acilitated by advancements in information and communica-
tion technologies ... work and leisure can increasingly be seen as extensions of
each other” (Deuze, 2007, p. 30). This transition to a media-saturated environ-
ment involves personal information spaces, which are spheres of individual tech-
nology use that are habitually incorporated into everyday life (Deuze, 2007).
Personal information spaces are physical (the location of where we consume
media such as the office or home and the devices that we use to consume
media) and experiential (interacting and communicating with people).
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A significant body of literature considers the various issues involved in the main-
tenance of the work-life balance (e.g., Denker & Dougherty, 2013; Gregg, 2011;
Greenhaus, Collins, & Shaw, 2003; Hill, Hawkins, Ferris, & Weitzman, 2001). It
would be shortsighted to argue that technology alone is responsible for reshaping the
boundaries between our personal and professional lives. Yet of these factors, tech-
nology, along with communication, plays a central role in structuring social life
(Orlikowski & Yates, 1994). Industry research bears this out. U.S. adults consumed
more than 11 hours of media each day in 2011 on average (EMarketer.com, 2012).
Furthermore, U.S. adults spend, on average, 23 hours per week communicating with
each other via social media, phones, and email (EMarketer.com, 2013). This
research indicates that personal and professional activities are often intermingled
when we engage with technology. Reflecting this, contemporary business literature
holds that employees who use social media in their personal lives expect similar
tools at work (Holmes, 2012).
In addressing the implications of the use of technology in multiple contexts, it is
helpful to consider the composition of individuals’ various professional and social
networks. The widespread adoption of mobile technologies and social media has
given rise to what Raine and Wellman (2012) called networked individualism, which
is the idea that people function more as connected individuals and less as embedded
group members in networks. Networks are larger, more diversified, and prone to
change in this generation than in prior generations. Raine and Wellman (2012) argue
that mobile and social technologies have not isolated people as was initially feared
but instead, they have reconfigured social relations in such a way that people have
more freedom to move from group to group. Related to this, the concept of context
collapse describes the flattening out of multiple distinct audiences in one’s social
network (Vitak, 2012). Rather than making each audience distinct, social media
erase the lines between temporal, social, and spatial boundaries to the point where
one’s audiences are treated as one large homogenous group (Vitak, 2012). This is
seen as problematic in the context of work, as employees have developed strategies
to ward off context collapse and to maintain a degree of separation from work and
home (Vitak, Lampe, Ellison, & Gray, 2012).
The increased potential for peer-interaction outside of the workplace on social
media brings to mind privacy-related questions involving the maintenance of profes-
sional/personal boundaries. The rise of interactive media and the new capabilities of
networks to carry mass amounts of information have given rise to a digital enclosure
for consumers (Andrejevic, 2002; 2009). The enclosure of personal information is a
form of exploitation in which companies have unequal access to data collection,
storage, and manipulation. From the consumer’s perspective, entry into a digital
enclosure is frequently predicated on surveillance or monitoring (Andrejevic,
2009). This has implications that can be applied to the professional space. Twitter
tweets, Facebook status updates, and other social media posts that are shared and
seen by one’s co-workers all have the potential to contribute to a subculture of
support in the workplace (Gregg, 2011). However, scholars have not fully explored
the relationship between the surveillance proclivities of employers and this support
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