Organisational Responses to Social Media Storms

Book excerpt: This book explores the growing phenomenon of the social media storm in the context of educational establishments. With a methodological approach that draws on aspects of virtual and offline ethnography, the text presents a series of case studies of public online risk-related incidents. Our ethnographic methodology adopts the use of unobtrusive data collection approaches, to explore publicly available data from online interactive behaviours. Drawing on a range of methods from internet mediated research (IMR) to inform our ethnographic account, the book provides an in-depth exploration of the public and organisational discourses arising from four short, clear high-profile internet risk case studies in the education sector ranging from early year to higher education. It considers the social construction of a new ‘risk’ culture arising computer-mediated social interactions and its impact on, and response by, the organisations and society.