Paper Sample: Leadership and Social Media

Communication is vital in human existence because it relays ideas and meaning between people. Media are fundamental to our sense of living in a social world (Couldry, 2012). It is even more critical in governing, making it one of the valuable assets of a leader. The world has witnessed rapid evolution, especially in technology. Mobile handset technology and the internet has ushered social media into the communications space.

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Social media is widely referred to as new media, coming in the form of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, and several others social platforms. The social media wave has been massive, and it has been a game changer in the exercise of leadership in modern organizations (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Organizations' leaders have used it in recruitment, crisis management and publicity. Social media has made it possible for a person to inform many other people about products and where they can be acquired (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). It has created an online based community that readily gives an audience to the issues expressed by the organization.

Social media has turned out to be on the leaders' advantage since it brings out some positive aspects like enhanced interaction and faster information broadcasting. Approximately 65% of adults in America use social networking sites (Perrin, 2015). Conversations are more vibrant in social platforms, thanks to the useful post and comment interface.

However, it also comes with mind-boggling implications like an escalation of fake news, privacy intrusion, and cyberbullying. The quality of user-generated content sharply differs from excellent to abuse and spam (Agichtein, &Mishne, 2008). Information sharing on social media is not highly regulated, which allows for the formulation of malicious conspiracy theories, propaganda, and fake news. This blow has perennially hit leadership structures, occasionally being forced to respond to damning reports and visuals that go viral on social media.

References

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59-68. Retrieved from https://sciencedirect.com

Couldry, N. (2012). Media, society, world: Social theory and digital media practice. Polity.Retrieved from https://books.google.com

Agichtein, E., Castillo, C., Donato, D., Gionis, A., & Mishne, G. (2008, February). Finding high-quality content in social media. In Proceedings of the 2008 international conference on web search and data mining (pp. 183-194). ACM.

Perrin, A. (2015). Social media usage: 2005-2015. Retrieved from https://ictlogy.net/bibiliography/reports/projects.php?idp=2894

Mangold, W. G., & Faulds, D. J. (2009). Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Business Horizons, 52(4), 357-365. Retrieved from https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681309000329