The Darkside of Enterprise Social Media

Due to the novelty of social media technologies, and our experiences using them, research is only beginning to unveil how the hours dedicated to online interactions are impacting human behaviour. Enterprise social media (ESM) platforms such as Jive, Chatter, and Yammer, are akin to the public Facebook but are employed for internal communication and social interaction within the enterprise.  In the business management literature, a bias towards the positive impacts of social media is clearly evident.  For example, studies published in top-tier business journals report social media use is positively associated with employee innovation (Gray et al., 2011), community relations (Kane et al., 2009), worker performance (Wu 2014), social capital (Moser et al. 2013), employee engagement (Koch et al. 2012), and even the equity value of firms (Luo et al. 2013). Indeed, my own research has highlighted the positive association between social media and idea generation (Parise et al., 2015). However, there is a clear darkside associated with ESM that remains under researched.  For example, a recent survey from Microsoft shows that 55% of UK office workers suffer from information overload and have endured anxiety as a result of the deluge of content they are exposed to through new communication platforms. Information overload is a substantial problem for society as it leads to stress, low morale, poor decision-making, and decreased productivity.  This seminar discusses the emerging research on the darkside of ESM including my own IRC New Horizons funded project on information overload.

View the slides from this presentation here.

This seminar is one of a series of seminars in the Whitaker Ideas Forum seminar series.  Dr Whelan will be representing the Agile and Open Innovation (Lero) research cluster.