ABSTRACT
Today, everyone is online. From grandmothers to governments, the number and variety of users has clearly pushed the Internet past the tipping point of ubiquity. A key component of Internet use over the past five years has been the group of applications called social media. Once intended only to be a way to connect two people, social media has quickly grown into an organizational tool used to create a more human face and foster a relationship with stakeholders (Sweetser, 2010; Smith, 2012). As with any organizational communication tool, social media is heavily intertwined with reputation—it can create it, it can improve it, and it can damage it all at the speed of a data connection.
