A diverse and inclusive PLN enables us to learn about different cultures, come into contact with a wide range of perspectives, enrich our understanding of the world, and enhance our quality and creativity through social media sharing. At the same time, we can establish trust relationships with network members, creating a positive and efficient learning environment. In this way, in social media sharing, we will also continuously enhance our influence, and our opinions and content can attract more attention and be more meaningful.

How does social media engage communications?

Social media promotes online interactions between people to engage communications. Generally speaking, there are some ways to engage communications:

  1. Encourage the posting of attractive content: likes, reposts, and comments can all encourage people to share more informative and entertaining content.
  2. Encourage positive comments: Anyone can access and comment on content they are interested in. Publishers can reply to others’ comments or report comments that have adverse effects on society.
  3. Recommend content related to personal interests: When people visit social media platforms, they generally passively receive some recommended content that is targeted at you, which can more attract you to engage communications.
  4. Encourage participation and creation of topic communities or tags: Anyone can participate and create topic communities that they are interested in anytime and anywhere. In these communities, people will come into contact with many people with common interests, or when posting content, bring topic tags, which can also attract people with similar interests to communicate.
  5. Allow to initiate competitions: Anyone can initiate a voting competition or other competitions with more challenging and encouraging mechanisms, which can increase everyone’s participation and communication interest.

How does social media challenge communications?

Social media challenges communications in many ways, for example:

  1. People are constantly bombarded by a large amount of information on social media, and they will feel very tired of such things.
  2. There is a large amount of negative and erroneous information in social media, which affects people’s daily lives.
  3. Social media is also crowded with many types of advertising information, which will reduce people’s interest in using social media.
  4. Social media does not possess secrecy, and protecting personal privacy, intellectual property rights, and respecting diversity are important and serious challenges.

Is social media inclusive?

Social media is potentially inclusive. The inclusiveness of social media means that anyone can create and access diverse content. This is also advocated and encouraged by social media services. However, this platform may alienate users with disabilities or special needs, as these groups may face various difficulties in practice and are unable to participate in social media. In addition, if people themselves do not truly respect diversity, it is natural for social media communication to generate stereotypes about certain groups or events, ostracizing and belittling others.

Does my PLN amplify the views of others?

I think my PLN is inclusive. I tend to amplify others’ perspectives to a certain extent. I generally do not consider the cultural background of network members, respect different opinions and experiences, share and discuss other people’s content, encourage everyone’s (positive) creativity, and praise others’ valuable content.

The policies of employer social media communication expectations？

According to my research, there are generally the following contents in employee social media communication expectations:

  1. Declare the role and responsibility of using professional social media.
  2. Clarify the employer’s values and goals.
  3. Remind social media users of what content needs to be kept confidential and clarify the consequences of violating confidentiality.
  4. Prohibit any illegal, discriminatory, defamatory or other content.
  5. Require respect for the privacy and intellectual property rights of others.
  6. Disclaimer for personal behavior.

How to better use social media to build PLN?

We first need to know our interests and goals, and find communities on social media platforms. When creating identities and profiles, use user names related to interests to enrich your resume. Pay attention to experts, topic tags, and topic communities in your field of interest. Actively participate in topic discussions and interactions through likes, comments, and sharing. Use social media tools such as Pinterest to organize harvested information and resources.