Otago’s Place in the World of Social

Dearly beloved, let us gather together the threads of what we’ve learned so far and consider a case study.

Yes, the aim here is to consider the information learned so far in this course and use it to analyse a real-life business and its social media decisions.

I’ve decided to look at the University of Otago, which is a business, but also a government organisation – which allows me to draw together several of the threads we’ve discussed in this blog so far.

First, let’s look at the business itself. Otago University, based in Dunedin, is New Zealand’s oldest university and will mark its 150th anniversary in 2019. It regularly ranks in the top two universities in the country, and its latest annual report shows it has 18,421 equivalent full-time students and 3803 academic and general staff members. The University’s primary role is to educate tertiary students, with a secondary role as a research organisation.

Getting practical – let’s start with strategy

When most of us start out on social media, there’s no plan. We’ve heard about a social media network, such as Facebook, perhaps because friends and family are on it, and generally we think it would be a good idea to be able to keep in touch.

A business entering into social media with as little forethought is either going to waste their time, or get into trouble.

A strategy is needed.

Networking communities at work

I belong to multiple groups on Facebook. Groups are a fantastic way of sharing information among people who have a common interest quickly and easily (and perhaps more privately than sharing email addresses).

What I’m looking at today, however, doesn’t include those groups, as for the most part they are online communities, and not communities of practice – today’s topic.

What’s the difference?

Acronyms ahoy!

 

Actually this title is misleading. There aren’t just acronyms to decipher in this blog post, but we are going to invest in some bullet points to explain several social media concepts to help businesses.

First we have the 4 C’s, then S.O.C.I.A.L, then the “honeycomb” of social media, and ending with a different group of 4 C’s. (Because social media theory likes to be like social media itself – challenging!)

Let’s start with the 4 C’s of Cook (2008)[1]:

• Communication
• Cooperation
• Collaboration
• Connection

Communication refers to the platforms we now have to be able to communicate. It’s tempting to say, ‘let me count the ways’! I can call, text, message, hangout, facetime, facetime audio, email, post and tweet my sister on the West Coast, for example.

To trust or not to trust?

My husband and I don’t put photos of our children on social media. Yes, I realise that puts us in the minority. But we’re working on the premise that social media, although it seems fleeting and transient today, will actually last well into the future, and we’re fairly sure at least a proportion of what I might think adorable today, they will find cringeworthy in years to come. I’m also concerned about pictures being stolen, or information about myself and the children being used for nefarious purposes.

The picture above is me, aged about six days. I think it’s cute now, but I wouldn’t have years ago!

Social media is, for persons and businesses, about social capital and trust. I don’t have great faith that information I put into the internet won’t be stolen or misused. So I choose to lock my social media down to a large degree, and keep my digital footprint as anonymous as I can.

Busineses wanting to boost their social capital and their bottom line by using social networking don’t have that choice.

Bureaucracy and social media

Big brother is watching you! Or, more likely today, monitoring your twitter feed!

Actually, I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but it is true that government, like businesses, have found social media irresistible, not just for the amount of data that is available through it, but for a wide variety of positive uses as well.

Let me count the ways (please note the following is not an exhaustive list):

• Police use social media to catch baddies! And pass on informative messages about traffic delays.
• Public information campaigns about important topics, like flags, are distributed through a wide variety of social mediums as well as traditional ones.
• Election campaigns are conducted as much online these days as on soapboxes, and a recent study found that there is a statistically significant relationship between the size of online social networks of candidates and election voting and election results.
• Information and experience is shared within large government bureaucracies using intranets, or wikis.
• Governments can ask questions of the people and get answers, or allow campaigns to drive change, such as change.org.

Ah but the risks

Web 2.0 and beyond…

In the beginning… there was the Internet, which led to the browser and the world wide web.

Yesterday, I picked up my mobile phone and typed “Chinese restaurant” into my Google app. Thanks to the global positioning network, my phone knew where I was, and produced on screen a selection of restaurants ranked in order of how close they were to my location; maps on how to get to each one; and ratings from previous diners at each choice.

In future, perhaps my phone will also read the menus available at each one, know which one offers my favourite Chinese meal choice, and allow me to place a booking or takeaway order from where I was standing, on a street corner in a city two plane rides away from my home.

Social -><- technology

In modern society, what are people without technology, or technology without people? The two are so intertwined that it seems impossible for either to exist in isolation.

Sociotechnical systems

Sociotechnical system: is the academic term for society and technology (or, more accurately, complex systems) interacting.

I liked this definition of sociotechnical design methods by Baxter and Somerville (2011):

Social media and business – a brief history

It seems right to start a blog about social media by working out what is this new-fangled thing, doing that scholarly thing – writing down a definition, and giving a bit of background. So, simply put, social media is the technology that:

 “facilitates the practice of social networking”[i].

Social networking is the thing those of us born before the 1990’s thought of as parties, gossip around the tea room, chatting to other mums at the school gate, or attending after work events. Now we can do all of those things in our pyjamas on our mobile devices.