Studying Social Networking Use and Perceptions
There have been several studies done to find out people's perceptions on social networks, also about their usefulness or on how they fit on businesses or educational environments. For example, Lardinois (2008) mentions that according to the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, 93% of Americans believe that companies should use social networks and 85% believe they should use them to interact with consumers. 56% of consumers believe that a company is offering better services by interacting with them on social networks. In the website of this study of the Cone Limited Liability Company (LLC) (2008) it is shown that when asked about specific types of interactions, Americans who use social media believe that:
- Companies should use social networks to solve my problems (43%);
- Companies should solicit feedback on their products and services (41%);
- Companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand (37%);
- Companies should market to consumers (25%) (para. 5).
EHS Today (2009) mentions a study in 2009, published by the Deloitte Development (2009), Social Networking and Reputational Risk in the Workplace, pointing out that employers’ main concerns are about the potential for confidential or sensitive information to be disclosed. Another concern is the possible negative effect of posts by their employees on blogs and social networks. Deloitte Development (2009) survey results can be summarized as follows:
- 74% of employees surveyed say it’s easy to damage a company’s reputation on social media.
- 58% of executives agree that reputational risk and social networking should be a board room issue, but only 15% say it actually is.
- 53% of surveyed employees feel that their social networking pages are personal and that their employers should not view those pages.
- 40% of executives surveyed believe that they have a right to know what their employees post online. 30% admit to informally monitoring social networking sites. (pp. 4, 6-8)
Wentworth (2009) cites the study Transforming Learning: Web 2.0 Technologies, assigned by American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and conducted by Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) which “found that the vast potential of Web 2.0 technologies has not yet been realized by the learning functions in most organizations.” And he reflects about companies' concerns with social networking sites, stating that:
| The majority of concerns with Web 2.0 technologies can be mitigated through policy implementation. Many of the survey respondents that offered best practices recommended clear procedures that include specific permissions and restrictions. The nature of these technologies means that they cannot be too tightly controlled, otherwise they will never flourish. Too much policing will drain the usefulness right out of the tool (p. 1). |
In this section we can see that there are some companies conducting studies about the general public’s perceptions on social networking tools. The results in a broad sense indicate acceptance of them, a general agreement that the public wants companies to reach them by using social networking tools and some concerns by executives and management because they are very powerful tools and they could be used to damage a company’s reputation.
Sirje Virkus & Juan Machin, Tallinna Ülikool, 2010