Social media managers as intermediaries: negotiating the personal and professional in organisational communication

ABSTRACT

Organisations are becoming increasingly reliant on social media for realising effective public engagement strategies, as well as managing branding and reputation. Nonetheless, traditional organisational external communications strategies have often proven to be unwieldy in developing and managing social media content. Instead, the development of organisational use of social media has often been reliant on the expertise of social media managers. This article explores some emergent characteristics of social media management in negotiating organisational reputation and management of employee use of social media for both external and internal communication. While substantial research exists about social media in organisations, there has been less focus on the pivotal role played by human ‘intermediaries’, such as social media managers, to negotiate the fraught ecology of online communication on behalf of organisations. The article utilises interviews with Australia social media managers to discuss their role in negotiating and legitimising new communication practices using social media.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• social media management
• organisational communication
• cultural intermediaries

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Diana Bossio

Diana Bossio is a senior lecturer and researcher in Media and Communication. Dr Bossio's research focusses on social media, journalism and news practices online and practices for digital participation. She is the author of Journalism and Social Media: Practitioners, Organisations, Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and co-editor of Social Media and the Politics of Reportage: The Arab Spring (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Anthony McCosker

Anthony McCosker is Associate Professor in Media and Communications and Deputy Director of the Social Innovation Research Institute. His research addresses digital inclusion and participation, and the impacts and uses of social media and new communication technologies, particularly in relation to health and wellbeing. He is author of Intensive Media: Aversive Affect and Visual Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of the book Negotiating Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest and Culture (Rowman & Littlefield Int, 2016).

Esther Milne

Esther Milne is Associate Professor, senior lecturer and researcher in Media and Communication. Her research focuses on the everyday media that shape our lives. From the banality of email to the curation of our public selves, media technologies interact with us in surprising and powerful ways. She is the author of Letters, Postcards, Email: Technologies of Presence (Routledge, 2010).

Daniel Golding

Daniel Golding is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication. His research focuses on the intersection of media history, cinema, videogames, and music. He is co-author of Game Changers: From Minecraft to Misogyny, the Fight for the Future of Videogames (Affirm Press, 2016).

César Albarrán-Torres

César Albarrán-Torres is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication. He has been widely published in academic and non-academic titles as a film and literary critic, author and translator. His current research focuses on what he calls gamble-play media, hybrid platforms where gambling and digital interactive media intersect.