CULTURE IN DIGITAL AGE

ALLY AMINA

The digital age, also called the information age, is defined as the time period starting in the 1970s with the introduction of the personal computer with subsequent technology introduced providing the ability to transfer information freely and quickly

Digitalization is imposing many challenges on cultural transformation of organizational, practice related to individuals, institutions users and producers

When we think of marketing and social media in organizations it’s often with the focus being on the external environment and our external customers. This is not wrong by any means, but I think we can too often take for granted another key stakeholder we are communicating to, our internal customers, our employees.

Our employees make up who we are as an organization and they have a great impact on our culture. The questions we have to constantly ask as leaders are “What experience am I creating for them?” And, “Is it aligned with the culture I want in the organization?” Social Media and how we use it as an organization can have a great impact in creating experiences that impact the culture. Social Media creates experiences, period. The experiences employees are having, both by external and internal communication, in organizations greatly impact how they think and act at work and if they are truly engaged or not.  Leaders need to recognize that all experiences create culture, and their culture is either working for them or against them that is Change the Culture, Change the Game. Social Media provides a very powerful, viral experience that can help accelerate the needed cultural changes internally. The platforms will come and go, but how organizations leverage people as the media in a smart way 

The web has become the place where young people most find their opportunity to explore and express their identities and their social relations,. The greatest transformation with the web compared with television, radio and print is that the technology puts the kids in the centre as culture creators rather than culture consumers. Not only does this upset traditional top-down marketing models but it also means that a single youth culture is now almost impossible to pin down But now, with so many technological touch points and interest-driven groups, there's no single social change that catalyses them. We are at a period in which our societies are coming to grips with the new technology. Part of the process is watching how people who have never experienced anything else push the boundaries. The Internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratizing force, a place where everyone can be heard and all can participate equally. But how true is this claim? It is argues that for all that we tweet  and like  and share in the Internet  in fact reflects and amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line.