Weblogs and internal communication in a corporate environment: a case from the ICT industry

Abstract

Innovations in web-based technology have generated new channels for communicative purposes. Blogs provide organisations a unique opportunity for informal knowledge sharing. However, much on the current research on blogs has a normative orientation and a focus on tools rather than the related social and communicative issues. Our theoretical approach is internal communication, which we link with the characteristics of this emerging form of social software. Based on our case, we analyse the factors affecting the use of blogs in the corporate environment, position blogs in the sphere of mediated communication and identify a two-dimensional framework on the types of internal blogs and the related modes of communication.