Connectivity as Productivity: Workplace from Meta and Organizational Datafication

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

If social media are generally considered workplace distractions, how does Meta promote their enterprise social medium, Workplace? Analyzing Meta’s corporate communication, I explore their emphasis on “connectivity” as Workplace’s key selling point, aligning with existing research on Meta’s self-construction. Highlighting three pertinent themes in the corporate communication, I explore how Workplace is promised to (1) subsume the gray media of corporate life (2) turn companies into communities where workers share information boundlessly, even about their personal lives and (3) that these streams of communicative data are ultimately used as a datafied proxy for corporate health via Workplace. I propose that the productivity claimed to result from Workplace’s connectivity hinges on a subtle merging of personal and professional aspects in employees’ lives, which is in line with broader Silicon Valley trends and Meta’s own organizational image. I discuss the implications and limitations of these findings.
Original languageEnglish
JournalMedia, Culture & Society
Pages (from-to)1-18
Number of pages18
ISSN0163-4437
DOIs
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2024

ID: 376289789