ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the relationship between plausibility and legitimation strategies and practices within the social media environment as they relate to organizational identity. Although scholarship on social media is now the fastest growing area of public relations research there has been very little critical analysis of the formative context in which social media technologies exist. Ultimately, the potential of a broadened, polyvonic, accessible formative context in which to make sense of the world is challenged by a convergence of structures, technological and social, and processes vying for legitimation in the digital landscape. Organizational crisis is another area where disorder, which we may see also as shocks to sensemaking, becomes evident. The concern for order has a long sociological heritage, but some assert that disorganization and disordering should play a more central role in our conceptions of scholarship. The work of Cooren et al. tackles the question of agency among non-human actants in organizations.