How to Increase Efficiency in Social Media Management?

DiMicco, J. M., & Millen, D. R. (2007). Identity management: Multiple presentations of self in Facebook. In Proceedings of the 2007 International ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (pp. 383–386). New York, NY: ACM. Retrieved from https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1316682

The authors provide a framework to understand “how users self manage self-presentation while maintaining social relationships in heterogeneous networks” (p. 383), or in other words, how company employees “balance maintaining relationships and impression management” (p. 383). To do so, the authors first reviewed 68 Facebook profile pages of employees at a large software development company to examine how users “balance the presentation of themselves as professionals versus non-professionals” (p. 384). The review identified three categories of users: “Reliving the College Days,” “Dressed to Impress,” and “Living in the Business World.” The authors then conducted interviews with eight employees to discuss further their Facebook usage; the data also supported the identified categories. The authors noted the potential organizational benefits of increased social networking use to promote interpersonal communication and develop relationships within the organization. The authors also noted the user burden of managing multiple profiles and difficulty in sophisticated advanced access control mechanisms. The authors recommended developing better authoring tools to increase efficiency of content management, and future research that examines users’ representation over time.  

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