Organizing in a fluid social media sphere: the empowering and disempowering effects of ownership, openness, and stakeholder engagement through an affordance perspective

Examining social media architecture and affordances, this paper explores three key dimensions central to the functioning of social media in democratic societies: ownership, openness, and stakeholder engagement. The aim is to propose a new research agenda that bridges critical management and organizational studies with social media studies, examining how the architectural ownership choices of certain social media platforms shape the intertwined dimensions of openness and stakeholder engagement. First, it briefly defines what social media platforms afford in the public sphere. Afterwards, it examines openness and stakeholder engagement as fluid organizing principles adopted by users on social media platforms. Then it explores how social media ownership can lead to either empowering or disempowering effects on the community of users. Lastly, it offers a list of research questions for potential paths forward in empirical research.