The corporate social media creep

This paper analyses an empirical case study of a corporate social media platform, and suggests and elaborates the concept of corporate social media creep framed by the notion of imagined affordances. The corporate social media creep describes the gradual expansion and encroachment of corporate social media on work and private life beyond its supposed productive function and purpose. The corporate social media creep is fuelled by ambient pervasive awareness which arouses users' hope for exposure to relevant pieces of information and creates a perception of other users' panoptic gaze. The concept of corporate social media creep extends theoretical knowledge of corporate social media users' experience and provides a critical discussion of why users keep paying attention to corporate social media applications they largely deem to be irrelevant for their work.