Abstract
Information plays an important role in the individual lives of people, and social media as an aspect of online information phenomenon is an exciting topic to explore in terms of its impact on social entrepreneurship. Many theoretical fields have contributed to the development of social entrepreneurship, looking in particular at the financial, political, and psychological impacts. This chapter is unique since it focuses on social enterprises and the impact of evolving technologies on social entrepreneurship. This chapter contributes to the literature on social media usage in social enterprises and offers a better understanding of the issues in the specific context of developing countries.
TopTheoretical Context: Social Media And Social Entrepreneurship
Social connection is considered a fundamental component in terms of the psychology of communities (Laroche et al., 2012). The evolution of technology from telegraph, radio and telephone to the computer and other modern devices has made it easier and faster for people to maintain interactions with each other. In an era of rapid technological development and ubiquitous digital technologies, the use of social media is possibly the most notable contribution in the field of networked society (Vodanovich et al., 2010; Harris, Rae & Misner, 2012). Recent studies demonstrate that around the globe there are now over one billion people that use social media for different purposes (Karikari et al., 2017; Anderson et al., 2016). This has revolutionised the process of obtaining information and this has in turn created increased online brand assurance amongst customers (Hammedi et al., 2015; Pagani and Malacarne, 2017; Brodie et al., 2013; Chang et al., 2015; Kim, 2016; Kumar et al., 2016).
Social media is comparatively a recent phenomenon facilitated by increasing global access to the internet. This has given rise to the concept of the so-called “Networked Society” (Castells 2003). The origins of social media interacting can be traced to the advent of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) in 1978, where users could log in to share software and information as well as to send messages and post to public communication panels. At the same time, because of the increasing interest and availability of home computers, social media became increasingly familiar to users (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). More importantly, this BBS is considered as a predecessor of the World Wide Web.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Social Marketing: Social marketing is the Combination of the concepts of commercial marketing and the social sciences. This is one of the cost-effective and most sustainable idea to influence an individual’s behavior.
social networking sites: Social networking sites give the opportunity to create and share a personal profile in the form of text, photo, video and audio in order to connect with other users.
Online communities: A group of people who have shared interest and communicate through interactive platforms such as discussion boards, websites, e-mail, and chat.
Web 2.0: Web 2.0 consider as a platform to produce and established software and content in a collaborative manner instead of the individual company.
User-Generated Content: User-generated content can be described by way of any form of content, it can refer to digital images, videos, audio files, statements, tweets, blog discussion form posts, and everything in between which has been generated and placed by amateur contributors or users.
Social Entrepreneurship: Social entrepreneurship mainly focuses on identifying various intractable social difficulties with the innovative concept to eliminate those problems as well as to elevate economic value and the condition of the society.
Social media: Social media is a platform which allows to publish and observe the diverse form of information and thus it can be implemented as a strategy for marketing and communication, which involves continuous updating.