Uses and Risks of Microblogging in Organisational and Educational Settings

Purpose: The paper aims to clarify the relationship between organisational and educational use of microblogging. Although enterprise and education are very different sectors of activity and have diverse research traditions, this review argues that there is a benefit to be derived from comparing research work across the two settings. Design/methodology/approach: The paper conducted a thematic analysis of research literature on microblogging for the two fields. The collection comprised around 30 papers on enterprise microblogging (EMB), defined as use of microblogging primarily with internal organisational audiences behind the firewall. Twenty-five research papers on microblogging in higher education (MIHE) made up the rest of the corpus. A generic framework of uses and risks of microblogging was produced and it is the main contribution of the paper. Findings: The comparison of the literature on microblogging in the two sectors has led to the development and evaluation of a generic framework, which graphically presents its use and risks. The paper has introduced some ideas about how microblogging is used and they are potentially useful for the other context, for instance, the concept of awareness from the organisational literature. While the organisational literature has a major focus on risk, this appreciation is far less developed in the educational context; increasing such an emphasis would improve employability. Research limitations/implications: Most of the research on EMB to date has been about uses of microblogging in large organisations, often information technology based. Research on MIHE has been experiments on the effect of microblogging in learning and classroom activities. Therefore, there is room to expand research beyond these settings. Practical implications: The developed framework can be a useful guide for other researchers to explore issues around microblogging in different settings, such as educators using microblogging for research or use in other contexts. It is helpful to researchers to see how different theoretical concepts and research methods might be deployed in another context. The framework might also be used for comparing other technologies apart from Web 2.0/microblogging. Originality/value: The paper has been the first review that we are aware of that has concentrated on the uses and risks of microblogging technologies in these particular contexts, organisation and education.