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Emerging technologies have the potential to significantly change the way people work and function, with tremendous impacts on people and the societies in which they live. For emergency management practice, efficient and effective use of emerging technologies can save both lives and property, while also improving the way emergency managers communicate with the populations they serve. However, the use of emerging technologies can also have negative and unforeseen consequences. Thus, it is essential to have a comprehensive understanding of how emerging technologies function as a communications and information-sharing tool to improve the practice of emergency management.

Furthermore, as with the emergence of any new technology, social justice issues must be considered. For example, is an emerging technology affordable enough for all to use, or does the technology add to the so-called “digital divide,” increasing the gap between the haves and have-nots? Or does the emerging technology serve as an equalizer, providing access and availability for all socio-economic status groups? This chapter serves as an introduction to these issues and how they impact emergency management practice in a discussion of how the communication process functions, how emerging technologies impact communication strategies in emergency management, and the importance of including a social justice framework in emergency management operations and plans to understand how these emerging technology tools can be used to keep people and property safe from disasters.

Digital technologies have become indispensable in businesses and are gaining attention in academic institutions context too. Digital technological ecosystems provide a platform to communicate and share their products and services to existing and potential customers. Entrepreneurial startups and companies face internal and external challenges utilizing social media technologies to commercialize their business ideas. The purpose of this paper is to identify opportunities and challenges faced by academic entrepreneurs' startups.

This research has adopted a qualitative approach comprising of semi-structured in-depth interviews with academic entrepreneurs’ startups to find the main challenge they face using social media platforms. The purpose was associated with an exploratory type of study and also included a prominent unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and technological opportunism (TO) model. The research respondents were 23 academic entrepreneurs startups who were chosen applying purposive sampling. Respondents were given a set of a questionnaire consisting of close-ended questions that are five-point Likert scale. The questionnaire included various parameters to measure the social media challenges the academic entrepreneurs’ startups undergo in the initial phase of their businesses.

The study identified that business-to-customer relations, brand, reputation, competition and cultural and language influence digital technologies entrepreneurship. While, the findings discovered the extended research model has a positive influence on academic entrepreneurs' intentions to use digital technologies media platforms. The outcome of this paper has thrown more light on which issues are there in digital technologies entrepreneurship, the determinants and actual usage advantages from UTAUT model and TO model that could be properly employed to solve issues of digital technologies media platforms and the potential concerning the adoption and use of digital technologies.

The study of academic entrepreneurs' startups can be considered original in nature. There is dearth of standard literature in the upcoming area of academic entrepreneurship. Governments are taking initiatives to promote academic entrepreneurs' startups, and the findings will be able to give them a right direction.

The purpose of this article is to report on a research project that explored social media best practice in the public library sector.

The primary research approach for the project was case study. Two organisations participated in case studies that involved interviews, document analysis, and social media observation.

The two case study organisations use social media effectively to facilitate participatory networks, however, there have been challenges surrounding its implementation in both organisations. Challenges include negotiating requirements of governing bodies and broader organisational environments, and managing staff reluctance around the implementations. As social media use continues to grow and libraries continue to take up new platforms, social media must be considered to be another service point of the virtual branch, and indeed, for the library service as a whole. This acceptance of social media as being core business is critical to the successful implementation of social media based activities.

The article provides an empirically grounded discussion of best practice and the conditions that support it. The findings are relevant for information organisations across all sectors and could inform the development of policy and practice in other organisations. This paper contributes to the broader dialogue around best practice in participatory service delivery and social media use in library and information organisations.

Research around social media has focused on the usage of tools rather than the conditions that allow staff to use social media to reach users effectively. This research fills the gap by exploring the organisational culture that allows staff to use social media in order to develop a participatory library service.

In recent years, social media have attracted considerable attention. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a critical literature review of social media research with the aim of developing a conceptual framework to explain how social media applications are supported by various social media tools and technologies and underpinned by a set of personal and social behavior theories or models.

This study adopted a two-stage approach. The first stage involves a critical literature review of academic journals in social media research, followed by the proposal of a conceptual framework that highlights the tools and technologies as well as theories and models that serve as the foundation of social media applications. The second stage involves the use of an actual case to demonstrate how the proposed framework facilitates the development of a social media application for a regional division of an international non-government organization.

The literature review indicated that social media have been applied in diverse business areas with the support of various social media tools and technologies and underpinned by a range of personal and social behavior theories and models. Based upon such findings, a conceptual social media application framework was devised and its usability illustrated via a real-life case study. Managerial implications are also discussed.

Social media covers a wide range of research topics and thus, the literature review presented in this study may not be exhaustive. Nevertheless, the proposed framework and case study can both serve as reference for future research and provide recommendations for practitioners in the design and development of their own social media applications.

This study not only explains the importance of applying social media in various business sectors, but also enhances the understanding of the infrastructure of social media applications. The study also provides insights for improving the efficiency of application solutions. Organizations are advised to adopt social media in their business based on the proposed conceptual framework.

With a literature review of social media research and a real-life case study, this study presents a conceptual framework using extant theories and models to form a foundation for social media applications. The framework extends existing knowledge on the design and development of information systems.

The purpose of this study is to deepen understanding of the effects of using social media technologies to acquire technological knowledge and organizational learning competences, of technological knowledge competences on organizational learning and finally of organizational learning on organizational performance.

The study was performed by analyzing data from a sample of 197 technology firms located in Spain. The hypotheses were tested using a structural equations model with the program LISREL 8.80.

This study’s conceptual framework is grounded in complexity theory – along with dynamic capabilities theory, which complements the resource-based view. The study contributes to the literature by proposing a model that reflects empirically how business ecosystems that use social media technologies enable the development of interorganizational and social collaboration networks that encourage learning and development of technological knowledge competences.

It would be interesting for future studies to consider other elements to conceptualize and measure social media technologies, including (among others) significance of the various tools used and strategic integration. The model might also analyze other sectors and another combination of variables.

The results of this study have several managerial implications: developing social media technologies and interorganizational social collaboration networks not only enables the organizational learning process but also encourages technological knowledge competences. Through innovation processes, use of social media technologies also contributes to strengthening companies’ strategic positioning, which ultimately helps to improve firms’ organizational performance.

Since social media technologies drive information systems in contemporary society (because they enable interaction with numerous agents), the authors highlight the use of complexity theory to develop a conceptual framework.

The study also deepens understanding of the connections by which new experiential learning contributes to the generation of coevolutionary adaptive business ecosystems and digital strategies that enable development of interorganizational and social collaborative networks through technological knowledge competences. Only after examining the impact of social media technologies on organizational performance in prior literature, did the authors underscore that both quantity and frequency of social media technology use are positively related to improvement in knowledge processes that lead to employees’ creation and acquisition of new metaknowledge.

Drawing on the model of technology-in-practice and the literature on bona fide approaches and technological affordances, the purpose of this paper is to argue that collectives involved in emergency response may exhibit similar and different usage patterns for technology due to the combined influence of the temporal development of the response actions and the existing and newly enacted organizational, social, and technological structures.

To enrich the argument about the inter-related influence on response organizations’ use of technology across phases of the disaster response, this research uses a multi-method and longitudinal case study of citizen-based response organizations after Hurricane Sandy.

Findings show that technologies were used similarly by response organizations immediately after the hurricane, whereas the later use of technologies exhibited variations. Moreover, Twitter was used consistently for diverse purposes across the phases of the disaster response, whereas Facebook usage among organizations first diverged and then converged two months after the hurricane. The organizations’ different patterns of social media use also reflected the construction and reconstruction of resource networks for relief operations over time.

This study integrates multiple theoretical frameworks in explaining the processes and outcomes of technology use for collectives in emergency response, which presents an example of bridging and enriching the theoretical constructs from the areas of technology adaptation and emergency management.

Findings of this study provide practical knowledge about the mechanisms of integrating multiple information systems into the building of resilient social systems for emergency response.

Findings of this study enrich social understanding about how the use of technologies for collective activity in emergency situations can go beyond one-time events and lay the foundation for long-term resilient emergency management.

The originality of this study lies in its mixed-method and longitudinal design, which allows for the examination of the timing, circumstances, and outcomes of citizen-based response organizations’ technology use.

Given the increasing use of social media and other digital technologies, critical theorists argue that social life has become increasingly structured by neoliberal market logics. Little research has empirically tested these claims.

This study is the first to examine whether the use of digital technologies in the avant-garde literary field is accompanied by neoliberal logics. Developing a cultural logics approach to neoliberalism, which allows for the identification of the independent logics of entrepreneurship, market-faith, profit-maximization, efficiency, and individualism, I draw on archival data and interviews with editors and writers to explore the relationship between digital technologies and neoliberalism.

Editors and writers legitimate some neoliberal logics and reject others. Entrepreneurship and efficiency are strongly legitimated. Profit-maximization is generally rejected. Market-faith and individualism are legitimated differently by editors and writers who occupy different positions within the field, drawing attention to the importance of field position, organizational affiliation, and career exhaustion in the use of digital technologies in the avant-garde literary world. Many of these findings are surprising given the historically non-economic orientation of the field.

Future research should explore neoliberal logics in other aspects of literary production and in other social domains.

This study provides a novel approach to the study of neoliberal logics as well as their relationship to digital technologies. Such an approach complements recent agendas in economic sociology and contributes to debates about the relationship between new technologies and capitalism.

This study aims to enhance understanding of using Web 2.0 technologies and social media in a global corporation.

A qualitative case study in a global corporation was conducted to illustrate the main uses of social media and to describe the related service portfolio.

The main uses of social media were identified and conceptualized based on the case company data. Internally, social media was used to for internal communication and knowledge transfer, to reach personnel and to conduct internal idea crowdsourcing. Externally, social media was used to enhance communications related to the company brand, to enable dialogue with customers, to build communities with various stakeholder groups and to engage external stakeholders in idea generation via a crowdsourcing platform. A categorization of social media uses for communication, collaboration and connecting vis‐à‐vis external and internal uses was created. Idea creation practices were further conceptualized as the main enactment of Web 2.0 social media technology.

This study is a single case study and thus the results cannot be generalized.

As Web 2.0 technologies and social media have become a topic of interest for many companies, it is essential to understand how social media can be used in a business context. The classification of social media uses is deployed to highlight the possible implications for company operations, and the human factor is emphasized in system adoption and use. Challenges related to social media implementation are described.

As of to date, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence on uses of social media. This research is based on a case study, allowing an in‐depth insight into the phenomenon and related issues.

The diffusion of social media among public administrations has significantly grown in the last years. This phenomenon has created a field of research that seeks to understand the adoption and impact of social media in the public sector. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that make social media successful in Spanish local governments.

The paper is based on an adapted version of a neo-institutional model: Enacting Electronic Government Success (EEGS). The data have been collected through three main sources: primary data from a questionnaire designed and conducted by the authors, secondary data of statistical sources, and tertiary data collected through Klout Score.

The results from a survey and statistical analysis provide preliminary validation of the model and show a direct relationship between organizational, institutional, and environmental factors with the successful use of social media in local public administrations. The data analysis shows that ten variables jointly explain 54.6 percent (adjusted R²=0.546) of the variability observed in the dependent variable.

First, the analysis model used represents a limited sample size to carry out a complex quantitative analysis. Second, the use of Klout Scores can offer some bias. Finally, certain variables complicate the comparative potential of the study.

This study provides original primary data and contributes to the growing field of study related to social technologies in public administrations. This research also confirms in an exploratory way the validity of the EEGS model.