International Journal on Media Management

ISSN: 1424-1277 (Print) 1424-1250 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hijm20

Social Media, the Digital Revolution, and the

Business of Media

Andreas M. Kaplan

To cite this article: Andreas M. Kaplan (2015) Social Media, the Digital Revolution, and
the Business of Media, International Journal on Media Management, 17:4, 197-199, DOI:
10.1080/14241277.2015.1120014

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14241277.2015.1120014

Published online: 09 Dec 2015.

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International Journal on Media Management, 17:197–199, 2015
Copyright © Institute for Media and Communications Management
ISSN: 1424-1277 print/1424-1250 online
DOI: 10.1080/14241277.2015.1120014

INVITED ESSAY

Social Media, the Digital Revolution,

and the Business of Media

ANDREAS M. KAPLAN
ESCP Europe Business School, France

Social media, defined as “a group of Internet-based applications that build

on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow
the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan & Haenlein,
2010, p. 61), have been a game-changing development for corporations and
individuals alike (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010). Such applications as Twitter
(Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011), Instagram, or Foursquare (Kaplan, 2012), which
did not even exist a decade ago, form an essential part of today’s media and
communications landscape. Wikipedia (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2014), created
in 2001, now comprises approximately 35 million articles in 288 different
languages. Facebook, launched in 2004, connects more than 1.4 billion active
members all over the world, a user base that is larger than the populations of
Europe and North America combined. YouTube, founded in 2005, processes
more than 3 billion searches per month, making it the second largest search
engine behind industry giant Google (which happens to own YouTube).
All of this means that social media are no longer simply a form of amuse-
ment for younger generations. They affect everyone, consumers as well as
organizations. Business executives, consultants, and decision makers alike
all struggle with understanding and decrypting how to best make use of
the various social media applications that are available in the marketplace.
Notably, this process involves not only managing one’s online presence but
also handling the increasing availability of data from social media applica-
tions (Peters, Chen, Kaplan, Ognibeni, & Pauwels, 2013), such as corporate
or user-generated content, user profiles, and habits, as well as information,
such as geo-locations. Access to such data has provided firms with a variety

Address correspondence to Andreas M. Kaplan, ESCP Europe Business School, 79 Avenue

de la République, Paris 75011, France. E-mail: kaplan@escpeurope.eu

197
198 A. M. Kaplan

of opportunities while exposing them to new challenges (Kaplan & Haenlein,

2010).
Indeed, many have navigated the social media landscape successfully,
showing the potential of these platforms to yield impressive outcomes.
In politics, for example, social media communications were a key element
in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, which led to his first election in
2008. Many states and public administrations make use of Facebook, Twitter,
and similar platforms, including the European Union, which aims to create a
feeling of European identity among its citizens through social media (Kaplan,
2014). Within the entertainment industry, stars such as Britney Spears have
built their communication strategies completely around social media (Kaplan
& Haenlein, 2012). Even the higher education sector might be close to dis-
ruption due to the arrival of digital elements, such as massive open online
courses (MOOCs) and small private online courses (SPOCs), and the overall
increase in the use of social media to facilitate teaching, encourage learning,
and engage students in universities across the globe.
This special issue is devoted to better understanding the challenges asso-
ciated with social media management. The first article, written by Michaël
Opgenhaffen and Leen d’Haenens, discusses how news organizations should
manage the social media use and presence of their journalists. By using sen-
sitizing concepts methodology, the authors provide valuable insights into
what to consider when designing social media policies.
In the second contribution, Angela M. Lee employs grounded theory to
characterize how journalists use micro-blogging platforms. Focusing on one
specific social media application, Twitter, the authors discover that media
consumers are rarely the focus of journalists when micro-blogging; instead,
most journalists make use of Twitter as an additional information source for
their own work and to communicate within the sector.
In the third article, Kelly M. Meyer and Tang Tang also analyze Twitter,
specifically, more than 4,500 tweets from 60 local U.S. news organizations.
They find that these organizations mostly use micro-blogs as an additional
means of news diffusion instead of relying on them for cross-promotion or
to supplement their traditional news services.
In the fourth article, Mikko Villi and Joo-Young Jung discuss how
Finnish, Japanese, and South Korean newspapers both connect with and
engage their audiences, in the online world in general and via social media
in particular. By relying on a number of qualitative in-depth interviews,
these authors demonstrate in what contexts newspapers collaborate with
their audiences. Similarly to Angela Lee’s work, they conclude that engage-
ment with newspapers’ social media communities is only occasional and
non-systematic.
In the final article, and within the scope of media dependency the-
ory, Liu Yang, Louisa Ha, Fang Wang, and Mohammad Abuljadail predict
online content purchase decision making (looking at actual buying behavior
 Social Media and the Digital Revolution 199

instead of willingness-to-pay) and compare younger and older consumers.

The results of their quantitative research indicate that social media intensity
dependency is strongest in predicting buyers’ purchase behavior.
In sum, this special issue shows the importance of social media within
the media business in particular and as part of the digital revolution in
general. This is done through various studies that apply a broad variety
of research methodologies, ranging from grounded theory to quantitative
content analysis. Together, these studies respond to the ways in which the
borders between the real and virtual world are disappearing and, in some
cases, are already nonexistent. One can be curious, impatient, maybe even
worried about where the social media adventure will ultimately carry the
consumer, as well as media corporations. The works presented herein reflect
the remarkable speed of this (r)evolution, given that, as suggested above,
the platforms they investigate did not even exist 10 years ago.

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