Social Media Use: Antecedents and Outcomes of Sharing

This chapter addresses three major aspects of general and workplace social media usage. The first section briefly describes how people use social media, with specific attention given to social networking sites (SNS). The second section summarizes the motivations for why people and organizations use social media. The third section identifies the outcomes associated with the usage of social media for both the individual users and the workplace. The outcomes for individuals are often contradictory and include social aspects, such as building social capital versus perpetuating loneliness, and health aspects, such as improving well-being versus increased stress over privacy concerns. Similarly, conflicting positive and negative organizational outcomes associated with job performance, job attitudes, social capital, and privacy issues are discussed.