Does social media usage matter? An analysis of online practices and digital media perceptions of communication practitioners in Europe

Highlights

• Public relations practitioner's personal and professional social media usage.

• Practitioners with a high level of usage of social media give more importance to social media channels.

• Active employees and consumers on the social web are more relevant gatekeepers for organizations.

• The divergences in age are progressively diminishing with regard to professional use.

• Right social media strategies and instruments are not being used.

Abstract

A key aspect for understanding and explaining online communication is the micro level of communication practitioners’ social media usage and their general attitudes towards digital platforms. This paper investigates how public relations practitioner's personal and professional use of social media is related to their perceptions of social media. A quantitative methodology was applied to perform this research. A population of 2710 professionals from 43 European countries working on different hierarchical levels both in communication departments and agencies across Europe were surveyed as part of a larger transnational online survey. Results show that practitioners with a high level of usage of social media give more importance to social media channels, influence of social media on internal and external stakeholders and relevance of key gatekeepers and stakeholders along with a better self-estimation of competences. Issues about diverse levels of overestimation of social media use, application and importance in the professional arena are also debated.

Introduction

The incorporation of social media and online platforms into communication strategies of organizations has been intensively discussed during the last years. The focus of research shifted from normative propositions like the promise of more symmetrical and dialogical communication approaches (e.g., Duhé, 2012, Kent et al., 2003Wilcox, 2006, Wright, 1998, Wright, 2001) to rational arguments about benefits, limits and structural prerequisites of online strategies (e.g., Treem and Leonardi, 2012, Zerfass and Pleil, 2012) to empirical studies on online practices in various regions of the world (Macnamara and Zerfass, 2012, Verhoeven et al., 2011, Wright and Hinson, 2009, Wright and Hinson, 2012).

The introduction of Web 2.0 technology and social media has dramatically impacted and transformed the day-to-day activities of public relations practitioners, who need to master digital tools for timely, accurate and effective communication (Taylor & Perry, 2005). There are various theoretical perspectives on individual acceptance of new technologies which mostly stem from the ‘uses and gratifications’ perspective (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003).⁴

As diffusion of innovations theory states, the rate of adoption of any change follows an S-shaped curve (Rogers, 1995), starting slowly and, if the innovation is considered by members of a social system to be useful, begins to accelerate. This theory helps frame questions of adoption of social media by public relations practitioners by underscoring the importance of attributes of the innovations, the communication channels involved in diffusion, the decision processes of adopters over time, and the social systems in which adopters live and work (Kelleher and Sweeter, 2012, Savery, 2005).

Although it has been widely recognized that the speed at which new technology has been adopted by organizations and considerable research has focused on the specific use of a single platform (Bortree and Seltzer, 2009, Porter et al., 2007, Rybalko and Seltzer, 2010, Waters and Jamal, 2011), more knowledge is required about the professional use of social media tools in public relations in diverse regions of the world through empirical and cross-cultural studies. There is a lack of previous research which is related to professional and private use of social media by public relations practitioners with their perception of social media. This paper focuses on these relations with the perception of influence of social media, self-evaluation of competences and importance of gatekeepers and social media tools.