The Emergent Characteristics of Blogs and SNSs and their Impact on Organizations

ABSTRACT

The increasing number of users of new communication tools over the internet such as blogs and SNSs is drawing the attention of various fields. These services allow individuals to disseminate and exchange information freely over the Internet, and there is a growing trend toward using this information exchange for marketing purposes by companies and for interaction with citizens by local governments. At the same time, the concept of "emergence"-the development of an unpredictable order in groups through new information exchange and interaction among individuals-is also becoming an increasingly important topic of study for social psychology, communication theory, organization theory in business administration, and other fields.

This paper describes the social phenomenon of emergence and explains the characteristics that make blogs and SNSs more conducive to sparking emergence phenomena as compared with other communication tools. This paper also introduces actual cases where blogs and SNSs have been used. Lastly, analyzing implications from these cases, this paper describes the impact of blogs and SNSs on organizations from the perspective of 1) emergence marketing, 2) creating networks for identifying and solving problems, 3) changes to customer/citizen-led and on-site oriented organizations.