A case study on the effectiveness of using social media tools for project communication.

摘要

Social media is a relatively new phenomenon which current literature shows is lacking the connection between social media usage and communication effectiveness. In support of the incorporation of social media tools into project team communication, this qualitative case study was been designed to gather opinions from individuals in the field of project management who currently utilize social media as a project team communication tool. The reason this study had been chosen was to determine if there is a link between social media tools and effective communication. Social media has continued to rise in popularity and understanding the benefit it can have on professional communication practices allows a team to determine if that is a suitable direction for their needs. Through one on one interview with fifteen individuals that matched the set criteria, information was obtained through open ended guiding questions that support the central research question on whether or not social media tools impacted the effectiveness of project team communication. Ultimately it was determined through both researcher and NVivo 10 analysis that social media tools within the project team have a positive impact on communication effectiveness. It was determined that while the entire group of participants had positive experience with social media communication in the project team, individuals that were in a higher age group were more reluctant to try it while the younger age groups embraced it. Due to the narrowness of participants, further research would be beneficial from a broader range of individual experience with social media as a project team communication tool.