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This chapter investigates the role of social media in enhancing the interactions between customers and event management. It is based on a field study conducted on three UK horse racing events using a set of interviews and questionnaires to probe the views of the audience and the managers. Findings underscore the growing importance of social media, which are progressively embraced by consumers as part of their daily communication mix. Horse racing customers are likely to use social media to leave event feedback. While there is demand for a reply, interviewed managers admit a weakness regarding the use of social media to gain post-event feedback − which can act as an important means to engage and co-create value with customers.

Videos of police abuse are often spread through technology, raising questions around how perceptions of police are impacted by these images, especially for 18–24-year-olds who are constantly “logged on.” Limited research investigates the impact of social media on attitudes toward police accounting for age and race. The present study utilizes 19 in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of urban college students who regularly use social media in order to understand how they have been impacted by this content. The findings suggest the necessity of using an intersectional framework to understand the impact of tech-witnessed violence. While no gender differences were uncovered, racial differences did surface. White participants described being minimally influenced by videos of police misconduct, rationalizing it as a “few bad apples.” In contrast, participants of color, except those with family members in law enforcement, described being negatively impacted. Viral content contributed to negative opinions of police, emotional distress, and fears of victimization. Ultimately, videos of police brutality do not impact young populations equally. Instead, they are comparatively more harmful to young people of color who spend more time on social media, can envision themselves as the victims, and experience feelings of fear, despair, and anger after watching these videos.

There has been a digital transformation of the sport industry that has resulted in an increase in the number of startups. Technological innovations derived from big data and social media have altered the way entrepreneurship is embedded in a sport context. This has influenced more technologically enabled sport startups that are driving change in the global economy. This chapter discusses the role of digitalization in changing existing business models and fostering a more entrepreneurial ecosystem. This includes focusing on technological innovations such as the impact of cloud computing and other data changes.

Institutions and organizations are increasingly using the digital media to communicate with stakeholders on a day-to-day basis and during crisis situations. Therefore, this chapter presents a bibliographic analysis on digital corporate communication technologies. The grounded theory’s inductive approach was used to capture and interpret the findings from Scopus-indexed publications. The articles were scrutinized in their entirety, including their research questions, methodologies and interpretation of the findings. Afterwards, this contribution identifies the opportunities and challenges that emerged during an unprecedented coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. In conclusion, it implies that there is scope for institutions and organizations to incorporate digital and social media in their crises’ communications and risk management plans. This will enable them to be in a better position to engage in credible and transparent dialogic communications with different stakeholders.

A hockey riot occurred on June 15, 2011 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Riots involve crowds. The presence of social media changes the spatial and temporal elements of the crowd, a process that contributes to online collective interpretations of social events, including riots. A key element of this process concerns the definition of the situation. Using Qualitative Media Analysis, we illustrate how the researcher of everyday life can retrieve and examine an accumulation of “definitions of situations” from social media, a process that provides insight into collective interpretations, including how online users made sense of the Vancouver riot. We begin with a short overview of the riot, briefly profile collective behavior in relation to the definition of the situation, and contextualize the importance of media in this process. We then examine what select posts made on social media can tell us about collective meaning making in relation to the Vancouver riot. We conclude by suggesting some directions for future research.

This study examined social media, tax morale, and tax compliance behaviour. Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was utilized to investigate the quantitative data gathered from 592 salaried and self-employed taxpayers in East Malaysia, comprising two regions – Sabah and Sarawak. The results showed that social media had no significant effect on tax compliance. There was, however, a significant and negative relationship between social media and tax morale. A significant and positive effect of tax morale on tax compliance was also discovered. The bootstrapping technique indicated that tax morale mediates the association between social media and tax compliance. This research is among the earliest in a developing country to investigate the effect of social media in enhancing tax compliance, thus, contributing to the tax literature with a broader focus.

Web 2.0 and the social networks have changed how organizations interact with their publics. They enable organizations to engage in symmetric dialogic communications with individuals. Various organizations are increasingly ­using different social media to enhance their visibility and relationships with their publics. They allow them to disseminate information, to participate, listen and actively engage in online conversations with different stakeholders. Some social networks have become a key instrument for corporate communication. Therefore, this chapter presents a critical review on the organizations’ dialogic communications with the publics via social networks. It puts forward a conceptual framework that comprises five key dimensions including ­“active presence,” “interactive attitude,” “interactive resources,” “responsiveness” and “conversation.” This contribution examines each dimension and explains their effect on the organizations’ dialogic communication with the publics. Hence, this contribution has resulted in important implications for corporate communication practitioners as well as for academia. Moreover, it opens future research avenues to academia.

This chapter illustrates the ways in which The Open University (OU), one of the leading distance learning universities in the world, uses a range of social media to engage members of the public in learning. The OU has been an early adopter of innovative technologies which enabled public engagement right from its inception, forty years ago, contributing to fulfilling its ethos of social justice. It is this aim to remove barriers and provide learning materials to a wide audience, including those who may be excluded from other learning institutions, which has been a major strategic driver of recent changes. Today the OU harnesses a range of social media to continue to develop this strategic policy. The OU's ecology of openness includes a presence on externally developed social media such as YouTube, iTunesU, Facebook and Twitter, which are used as platforms to transfer knowledge and expertise to interested members of the public and encourage academic debate. Alongside these, the OU has also developed its own cutting edge social media platforms, which also allow public engagement. Key OU platforms include OpenLearn, a website that gives free access to a vast range of OU course materials; and Cloudworks, a site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas, experiences and issues. This chapter explores the achievements of the OU in using social media to engage with public audiences, as well as highlights the challenges and issues encountered.

The aim of this chapter is to explore employee behaviors and expectations of the role of social media when searching for jobs, to offer recruiters and companies valuable insights to design and manage appropriate web-based employer branding and recruitment strategies.

The research strategy is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews involving 34 central informants: talented Gen Yers and social media recruitment experts and mangers. The project focuses on the Italian context, an exemplary country with the highest social media penetration rate.

The results demonstrate the “bounded” popularity of social media as a recruitment tool among Gen Yers who implement up to five active and passive behaviors, albeit not all widespread, according to varying patterns and using different social media for different purposes: receiving, seeking, sharing, leading, and experiencing. Gen Yers, with aims that vary in line with various staffing phases, collect and share rumors and voices from both internal and controlled organizational sources but also, and above all, from external and organizational sources that companies do not control directly.

Social media seem to offer appealing and valuable opportunities to attract and engage talented young individuals, sustaining the quality, quantity, and fairness of employment relationships. Conversely, they also involve some organizational risks and costs. The chapter offers some managerial cautions and advocates a radical change in the prevalent HRM mindset for the improved management of transparency that social media solutions entail.

Results contribute in understanding how social media can better sustain employer branding and recruitment activities, especially considering the needs and expectations of talented young employees and professionals in the Italian context. Italy is an emblematic context, where the social media potential appears to be extremely interesting, considering its high rate of social media penetration.