‘Loose tweets sink fleets’ and other sage advice: social media governance, policies and guidelines

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1538
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Author: Jane Johnston
• Date: 01 May 2015

■Academic Paper

‘Loose tweets sink fleets’and other sage

advice: social media governance, policies

and guidelines

Jane Johnston*

Faculty of Society & Design, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia

While socialmedia representsa broad range of benefits toorganisations and institutions, such asenhanced brand engage-

ment, it also presents challenges and risksto reputation and security, such as confidentiality breaches.Employee use of

popular socialmedia platforms, suchas Facebook and Twitter, bothat work and about work has resulted in organisations

developingsocial media policiesand guidelines as partof contemporary governancepractice. This paperinvestigates this

recent approachto corporate governance by examining 20 social mediapolicies and guidelines from a sampleof corpo-

rate, governmentand third sectororganisations that areactive social media users.It develops a basic framework for social

media governance based on the 13 common themes that emerge from the sample, including confidentiality, disclosure

and the public–private divide of social media usage. It draws on social contract theory and considers its importance to

the field of social media governance. Key implications for managers whoare tasked with developing and implementing

social media policies and guidelines are discussed.Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

As individuals flock to social media, organisations

are taking advantage of this behaviour to re-engage

with stakeholders and exploit it for their own use

(Mangold & Faulds, 2009; Postman, 2009; Zerfass,

Fink, & Linke, 2011). Web2.0 has provided the capac-

ity for organisationsto converse with consumers like

never before, giving unparalleled access to informa-

tion, enhanced brand awareness, opportunities for

collaboration, a richer user experience and improved

web metrics (Postman, 2009). This move has seen a

massive rise in research and business interest into

many and varied social media activities—from viral

marketing (Mills, 2012) to electronic word of mouth

(Kietzmann & Canhoto, 2013), engagement with

brand communities (Plangger, 2012) and expanded

forms of integrated marketing (Mangold & Faulds,

2009) to name just a few.

Muchoftheliteraturethathasscrutinisedthese

developments, however, has focussed on the role of

the consumer who is external to the organisation

(Campbell, Piercy, & Heinrich, 2012; Kietzmann &

Canhoto, 2013; Kietzmann, Silvestre, & Pitt, 2012;

Mangold & Faulds, 2009; Mills, 2012; Postman, 2009;

Spaulding, 2010). This paper shifts the focus from that

position to one of internal users of social media, nota-

bly employees. In particular, it focuses on the intersec-

tion between social media activity and new

approaches to governance practices and policies.

McHale (2012, p. 207) argues that ‘with the rapid

adoption of social media, a growing need exists for

companies to establish corporate social media policies

and governance models to guide and monitor em-

ployee and corporate social media activity’.Heis

joined by a growing body of scholars and profes-

sionals who urge the need for social media policies as

part of sound governance practice (Boudreaux, 2010;

Dawson, 2009; Foreshew, 2012; Linke & Zerfass,

2012; Macnamara, 2011; Zerfass, Fink, & Linke, 2011).

It is therefore somewhat paradoxical that research

shows a relativelylow uptake of social media policies

*Correspondence to: Jane Johnston, Associate Professor of Public

Relations and Journalism, Faculty of Society & Design, Bond

University, Gold Coast, Australia.

E-mail: jjohnsto@bond.edu.au

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 15 Number 2 pp 175–187 (2015)

Published online 22 August 2014 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1538

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.