Social media, networks and governance: on the inadequacy of traditional reasoning

Abstract

Social media have brought about an enormous acceleration and increase in information flows. They have caused traditional ways of describing organisations and their environment to quickly lose their effect. Current views on the relationship between supply and demand in market situations are also losing their validity. The network concept offers possibilities for developing effective forms of description and analysis. The example of the position of Dutch tomato exports to Germany shows that it is impossible to arrive at a useful formulation of the problem without the concept of the network. The disappearance of traditional descriptions starts with the language used. The terminology that was suitable for describing organisations in the industrial era has only limited value in the information era, or is even counter-productive. In many cases, the essence of what occurs in reality is not captured in traditional descriptions.