Social Media in Expert Networks handling Safety: Experiences from Three Cases

Introduction of social media for professional use in expert networks faces many challenges. Additional challenges cause the handling the safety issues. This paper presents the findings from three case studies in which we studied how social media can be adapted to support interaction in expert networks. The main findings were related to four topics: introducing social media to new users; working in an organizational context; facilitating a network; and having safety and well-being as a topic. While it is generally assumed that social networks are mostly self-organizing, it appeared that building up and facilitating of social media for a certain expert network requires lot of work in collaboration with network members. As organizations are pushed to be involved in social media our case studies challenge to look at the uses and users from a need-based perspective, with awareness on multiple contexts of and approaches to it's usage. If given the chance, experiences with social media in new contexts and by new users can empower professionals to take part in the processes and re-definition of social media.